About 134.4 million Nigerians are currently without the National Identification Number (NIN) as the NIN-SIM linkage deadline ends tomorrow, The Guardian can report.
As at October, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) revealed that 140 million Nigerians were yet to get NINs, with only 64.4 million unique identity numbers issued as at then.
However, the figure increased to 70 million this month, meaning only 5.6 million unique NINs were issued between October and December. Consequently, removing the 5.6 million from 140 million showed that 134.4 million Nigerians are still without NIN.
This further means that only about 70 million Nigerians might have linked their SIMs to their NINs, having in mind the multi-SIM nature of Nigerians, where an individual operates three to four networks.
Efforts to get the Head of Corporate Communications, NIMC, Kayode Adegoke, to comment on the development, was not successful.
The Federal Government had last week announced plans to introduce digital token comprising 16 alphabets and numbers to replace the current 11-digit NIN effective January 2022.
According to NIMC, companies and agencies are allowed to only store and verify virtual NIN or digitoken, which is a set of 16 alpha-numeric characters issued exclusively by an ID holder with NIN.