The federal government has approved the activation of new SIM card registration with mandatory NIN.

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami, who issued the directive on Thursday said the approval was in line with the Revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM Card Registration.

A statement by the Technical Assistant (Information Technology) to the Minister, Dr Femi Adeluyi said the implementation of the Policy will commence on Monday, 19th of April 2021. Adeluyi explained that the issuance of new SIMs and other suspended activities will resume on the same date, as long as verification is done and the guidelines are fully adhered to.

According to him, the Minister also directed NCC and NIMC to ensure that the provisions of the Policy are 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 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. “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,” he said. 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, he said institutions will be required to appoint a Telecoms Master (at the minimum of an Executive Management level) to provide the operational Primary NIN representation.

“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.

On NIN registration, Adeluyi stated that significant progress has been made in the process across the country, noting that that the Federal Government is committed to supporting all Nigerians and legal residents to obtain a NIN. 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 explained. He encouraged citizens and legal residents to bear with the government as the process has been developed in the best interest of the country.