Millions of phone users in Nigeria who are yet to get their national identity number do not need to worry or go to any NIMC centres to queue again.

The fresh update issued by the National Identity Management Commission has revealed that network providers like MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9Mobile can now enrol people, capture their data and give them NIN number.

According to what Abdulhamid Umar, the operation manager revealed to BBC News, the commission has given license to 170 other private and public organisation including Network providers to register people for the National Identity card.

This latest update comes some weeks after the Federal Government issued directives to all phone users to link their mobile number with their NIN.

At first, Federal Government gave December 30th as the deadline before extending the date to 19th January for those people that already have NIN and 9th of February for those people who do not have the NIN at all.

As a result of this, Millions of Nigerians are already panicking as many of them have invaded various NIMC registration centres across the country despite the second wave of COVID-19.

Can NIMC meet the Government Deadline?

Well since about 9 years that NIMC have been registering people for the national identity card, statistics gathered from National Communication Commission (NCC) has shown that 42 million people have been registered so far.

The figure is even less than 203 million mobile subscribers in Nigeria and the report also revealed that subscribers have increased from 198.9 million in July to 203.16 million in August 2020.

If you do normal basic mathematics, you will observe that there are still many subscribers who have not even enrolled for the NIN and rumours gathered from different reporters who witnessed the NIMC centre in Abuja disclosed that they are not sure if the commission can capture every mobile user in the country.

However, Mr Umar said the commission will do everything possible to see how many people they can register and blamed some Nigerians for their delay in registering for the NIN.

He also said that for more than 8 years now, the commission has been advising people to do NIN registration but they refused to make themselves available for the exercise.

Why NIMC when we have other means of Identification like Driver license, BVN, International Passport, Voter card?

Mr Umar said that those people who have a driver license, BVN and other identification cannot use that because they are not really verified and trusted.

He explained that only NIMC can provide we call foundational digital identity while the likes of driver license, BVN is only used for functional and specific purposes.

He also said that NIMC number is worldwide because the digital identity cannot be faked since they are well verified and contain details such as an address, biometric.

Places where People can go physically to register for their NIN

For people are still looking for nearest NIMC places to go to register for their National Identity number, they can visit the NIMC website here to access the place nearest to them.