Telecoms and other digital operators were over the last few weeks hamstrung from delivering services to their clients because the portal of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) designated to verify respective National Identification Number (NIN) was inoperative. The affected NIMC portal enables telecom firms, the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), banks and other agencies to verify the NIN of their customers before attending to them, in line with government directive. The downtime on the portal, which began penultimate week, persisted until last Saturday and left many Nigerians stranded. Telcos reportedly lost millions of naira on their hampered operations.
Owing to the NIMC portal downtime, telecoms subscribers nationwide seeking to retrieve or swap their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards or acquire new lines were unable to do so. Passport application processing by the NIS was stalled in some passport offices because the NIN of applicants could not be verified, with Immigration officials reported saying data capturing appointments had to be rebooked. Similarly, banks were unable to open new accounts for customers who had NIN as their only means of identification. Reports said the technical challenge made it nearly impossible for telecom firms to sell new SIM cards or retrieve lost lines, because following government directive making the NIN a mandatory requirement for registration of all SIMs, the operators have had to synchronise their SIM registration portals with the NIMC portal in order to verify subscriber details. The downtime on NIMC portal brought SIM-related services to near-halt as the major operators – MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9mobile – had to suspend SIM replacement/acquisition by subscribers. Responding to complaints from some telecoms users, MTN Nigeria said in a statement: “We are sorry we currently cannot process SIM swap and update requests due to external challenges. We appreciate your understanding and will post an update once this has been resolved.”
In its own public statement late last weekend, NIMC linked the portal downtime to maintenance work by one of its network service providers. Subsequent reports cited ICT network provider to government establishments, Galaxy Backbone, owning up that the breakdown of its central server warranted the temporary outage by its clients, including NIMC, and assuring that efforts were under way to fix the glitch. NIMC itself reiterated that agencies had no excuse not to continue with NIN verification in their services to the public because its tokenisation platform (vNIN) had been deployed as an alternative. Operators were, however, reported to be foot-dragging on the alternative platform because it was fraught with technical challenges, including the issue of know-how about its usage, to which they were not eager to commit resources since the switch would only be temporary – i.e. until the server glitch is resolved.
Government had late in 2020 directed all telecoms operators to block phone lines on their networks not linked to subscribers’ NIN. The deadline initially stipulated was extremely short (December 30, 2020). But, faced with mammoth turnout by subscribers seeking registration for the NIN at NIMC centres and public outcry, the deadline has since then been periodically extended, with the latest date fixed for the end of March 2022. Meanwhile, the NIN requirement has been broadened beyond telecoms lines to become mandatory for obtaining travel passport and driver’s licence, as well as registration for school certificate and university matriculation exams, among other sundry services.
It is doubtful that the whole objective of mandatory NIN registration, namely to tighten national security by linking individuals’ operations to their NIN profile, is anywhere near being achieved. Kidnappers, for instance, have been managing to sidestep the SIM-NIN linkage to make ransom demands on their victims. Yet the mandate on Nigerians to get the identification number and synchronise with all services they subscribe to has been a nightmare because of frustrations being encountered along the way.
NIMC is a parastatal under the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy but apparently isn’t up to the demands of digitalisation, given the fitfulness of its operations. Many Nigerians are yet to secure the NIN because NIMC’s processes have been problematic, and the agency isn’t accessible to the public as nearly all its advertised customer interface lines are dummies. For a digital agency, NIMC’s wonky workings are antediluvian.