By Chinenye Anuforo and Benjamin Babine, Abuja

The Federal Government has again extended the NIN-SIM linkage exercise by one month, as only about 51 million subscribers have been registered in the NIMC database.

This comes after a Federal High Court in Lagos State barred the government from blocking SIMs not linked to NIN upon the April 6 deadline following a lawsuit from a former second National Vice-President of Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. Monday Ubani.

Ubani had filed an originating motion asking the court to stop the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) from disconnecting all SIM cards not linked to NINs. His reasons were the slow pace of the registration process, among others.

Related News

Delivering judgment on March 23, 2021, Justice M.A Onyetenu, ordered that the deadline be extended by two months from the day of the judgement. Following this, the ministerial task force meeting on the NIN-SIM linkage, extended the period of the exercise to May 6, 2021.

The meeting, which was chaired by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, took place on Thursday. The request for the extension was presented to President Muhammadu Buhari, and he endorsed it.

According to the minister, the NIN-registration process has seen over 51 million people assigned NINs, noting that there are also many people who have enrolled and are in the process of being assigned NINs. He said with each individual having an average of three to four SIMs, the total number of SIMs tied to NINs is close to the total number of registered SIMs in the country.