Abuja, March 4, 2024 – The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says the objective of NIN-SIM linkage is to make Nigerians have digital identity to tackle security challenges.
Reuben Mouka, the Director of Public Communications in NCC, who spoke on Channels Television on Monday, said the essence of the SIM-NIN linkage was to provide digital information to track criminals.
He said it is the responsibility of the Nigeria Police Force to track bandits and kidnappers using the National Identification Numbers (NINs) of victims linked with their SIM cards.
“This is the reason we are talking about NIN-SIM linkage because we are taking about the people using phones to have their identities to help security agencies to track such calls.
“It is a duty of security agencies. We are providing all the necessary (information).
“It is the police that they (victims’ families) will apply to. From the rank of Deputy Police commissioner and below, they will be able to do the tracking.
“The essence of submitting these identities is to also assist the security agencies in fighting crimes. They may not tell you the number of crimes they have also resolved by use of well-identified individuals using phones.”
Mouka said some phone lines previously linked to NIN were barred because of conflicting information on their SIM cards and NIN.
He said some SIM cards had verification and identification issues like disparity in information such as names and other data.
The NCC director said people without verified NIN had been barred because the earlier ones they submitted were not good.
“There are still some subscribers whose NINs are yet to be verified by NIMC and those have to also be corrected.”
He said the affected subscribers would have to visit their service providers to validate their NINs and resolve other matters.
“For now, it requires those physical visits to the stations to get it verified and validated, but in the future, we hope that this will be done virtually.”
Muoka said it would be difficult to tell the actual number of phone lines that had been barred, but the NCC would do an audit before the end of the week as data is expected from service providers. (GBN)
