TheCable

Ali Isa Pantami, the minister of communications and digital economy, says 51 million Nigerians have registered for their national identification number (NIN).

Pantami announced the figure at a statehouse press briefing on Thursday.

This figure, he said, was as of March 31, 2021.

According to the minister, there are 189 million registered subscriber identification module (SIM) cards in the country.

Of this figure, he said 150 million have complete registrations while the remainder has problems of improper registration.

He explained that NIN will determine the total number of Nigerians that have registered.

Pantami said while owning a SIM card is optional, the NIN is mandatory as a lot of transactions are not supposed to be carried out without NIN.

The registration became mandatory following the federal government’s directive asking telcos to block sim cards that are not linked to NIN.

The federal government had extended the deadline to January 19, 2021, for subscribers with NIN to link it with their SIM, and February 9, 2021, for those without NIN.

The deadline has now been extended to April 6.