A staggering 29 million sim cards have not been linked to their National Identity Numbers as the deadline expires today.
 

Sim cards

The federal government's deadline for subscribers to link their National Identity Numbers to their SIM cards expires today.

However, a staggering 29 million sim cards have not been linked.

A top federal government official told Daily Trust on Monday that about 176m SIM cards had been linked to their owners’ NINs.

Nigerians who took to social media warned of the consequences of disconnecting millions of Nigerians from using their sim cards.

The government had given January 19 and February 9 deadlines for subscribers already with NINs and those without NINs respectively to link their SIMs with their unique identity numbers.

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ibrahim Pantami’s spokesperson, Uwa Suleiman, did not respond to Daily Trust’s inquiry seeking to know what would be the fate of those who failed to do the linkage before the deadline.

The Nigerian Communications Commission had said there would not be mass disconnection of telecom subscribers as a result of the ongoing linkage of NIN records to SIM Registration.