By Kola Alhassan
President Muhammadu Buhari has directed Telephone companies, (Telcos)to restrict all outgoing calls on lines not linked with the National Identity Number as from Monday April 4.
This was disclosed by Dr Ikechukwu Adinde, Director, Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, and Kayode Adegoke, Head, Corporate Communications, National Identity Management Commission, NIMC in a joint statement on Monday in Abuja.
According to the statement, the government was poised to commence the NIN-SIM Policy implementation since measures were already put in place for citizens and legal residents to comply.
Those yet to comply were urged to register for their NIN at designated centres and link it to their SIMs through NIMC and the Telcos channels.
They said that as now, over 125 million SIMs have their NINs submitted for immediate linkage, verification and authentication, noting that NIMC had issued over 78 million unique NINs till date.
The statement partly reads: “The government has directed all Telcos to strictly enforce the Policy on all existing and new SIMS issued in Nigeria.
“Outgoing calls will subsequently be barred for telephone lines that have not complied with the NIN-SIM linkage Policy from the 4th of April, 2022.
“Subscribers of such lines are hereby advised to link their SIMs to their NINs before the Telcos can lift the restriction on their lines.”
The Federal Government had issued the directive for the implementation and commencement of the exercise in December 2020. This is part of its security and social policies.
