BY BANYO TEMITAYO
THE Federal Government has approved the activation of new SIM card registration with mandatory NIN.
This is in line with the Revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM Card Registration.
The development was disclosed in a statement by Femi Adeluyi, Technical Assistant (Information Technology) to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami.
Adeluyi, who said the directive was issued on Thursday, said the implementation of the Policy would commence on Monday, 19th of April 2021.
He explained that the issuance of new SIMs and other suspended activities would resume on the same date, as long as verification was done and the guidelines were fully adhered to.
The Minister was also said to have directed the NCC and NIMC to ensure that the provisions of the Policy were strictly followed by all operators and subscribers.
The Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003, Section 23(a), specifies the role of the Minister to include the formulation, determination, and monitoring of the general policy for the communications sector.
The statement said, “The Minister had coordinated and led the development of the Revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM Card Registration in collaboration with all other stakeholders.
“An earlier Policy was approved on the 4th of February 2020, while the Revised Policy was developed in early March 2021.”
It added, “The final amendments to the revised Policy, based on the directives of Mr President to make the use of NIN mandatory for all SIM registration, were completed yesterday, 14th of April, 2021.
“Prior to that, the key aspects of the draft Policy were presented to the stakeholders at the 4th Review Meeting of the Ministerial Task Force (MTF) on the NIN-SIM registration which held on Friday, 26th of February, 2021.”
The Policy includes Guidelines on New SIM Acquisition and Activation, SIM Replacement, New SIM Activation for Corporates and Internet-of-Things/Machine-to-Machine (IoT/M2M), amongst others. The possession of a National Identity number will be a prerequisite for each of these categories.
For the Corporate registration, the statement said institutions would be required to appoint a Telecoms Master (at the minimum of an Executive Management level) to provide the operational Primary NIN representation.
It noted, “The Telecoms Master will also be responsible for ensuring that the users provide their NINs to serve as a Secondary NIN.
“For IoT/M2M activations, SIM security protocols would be implemented on the SIM profile to ensure that SIMs can only be used for point-to-point data services specific to the URL they are working with.
“All other services will be barred. In the event that a data only service is particular to individual use (eg home car tracking, WiFi, MiFi services, etc), the standard NIN registration process will be followed.
“A Telecoms Master will also be required for Corporates requiring IoT/M2M activations. The full details of the requirements for each class of service will be made available in due course.”
Adeluyi, however, said significant progress had been made on NIN registration across the country, noting that that the Federal Government was committed to supporting all Nigerians and legal residents to obtain their NINs.
He said, “The biometric verification process has been slower than anticipated, owing largely to the non-adherence of many previous SIM biometric capture processes to the NIMC standards.
“The Revised Policy will ensure that operators conform to the required standards for biometric capture.”
“The Guidelines in the Policy have been painstakingly developed and while they are thorough, it should be noted that they have been developed that way in National interest since the SIM is essentially a national resource,” he added.
