Breakdown in the National Identity Management Commission portal has halted all SIM-related services in Nigeria for days.
Reports have it that subscribers have been unable to get SIM replacement or acquire new SIMs because they could not access NIMC website for over 5 days.
Organisations like the Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigerian banks use NIMC platform to verify the National Identity Number customers before attending to them.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) directed the inclusion of NIN in the requirements for all new and existing SIM cards, telecom firms are required to synchronise their SIM registration portals with the NIMC portal in order to verify the details of their subscribers.
However, the downtime experienced over the past five days by the NIMC portal has made it almost impossible for telecom firms to sell new SIM cards or retrieve lost lines.
A source at MTN is quoted as telling The Punch that the downtime in the NIMC network which occurred late on Tuesday had brought SIM-related services to a halt.
“NIMC made it compulsory that before we can register a customer, we have to verify their NIN. The agency gave us a back route to its server. We connect to the server to verify NIN. When we verify, it will bring the record of the customer (the information the customer gave to NIMC while registering for NIN). We have to confirm the information the customer gave NIMC against what we have. There’s a way we connect to the NIMC server. It is that server that has been down since Wednesday.
“Before now, we didn’t need NIN to do this. We just use the customer’s valid ID card and SIM pack. If the customer does not have that, a sworn affidavit is okay. However, the introduction of NIN has changed that.”
