Telecommunications subscribers with the backing of the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers have urged the Federal Government to suspend the deadlines for the National Identification Number-Subscriber Identity Module data verification exercise.
They also called on the government to adopt a continuous registration model.
This, according to the body, will help the government to accommodate the National Identity Management Commission’s lack of capacity to host the data of telecommunication subscribers.
The President of the association, Adeolu Ogunbanjo, revealed this in an interview with our correspondent on Friday.
According to him, a continuous registration process will cover the various hiccups experienced by the exercise.
He said, “Unfortunately, there are so many hiccups with the SIM-NIN linkage. The NIMC cannot do the uploads after the registration.
“I will now tell the government to let the linkage continue just like the SIM. Let them remove the deadlines, for now. Let it be a continuous one. If they don’t do that, they will make people abandon their SIMs, and make the network operators lose a lot of income on these unused SIMs.
“So, these will even get slower. Let the minister postpone the deadline until December 2022 for now. They should give us a nine-month window to ensure that NIMC puts its house in order.
“Maybe they would have capacity then. Many of the NIMC centres do not register more than 10 new subscribers in a day. And there are so many subscribers seeking to do so. Also, for about two, three weeks, it was off. So, I think the capacity should be built upon, and then let’s look at the end of the year.”
