By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
A distraught crowd of Nigerians seeking to avert an impending disconnection of their SIMs, has stormed the office of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to enroll for their National Identity Number (NIN),
Having a NIN a a conditioning for using telecommunication services effective from February 9, 2021.
As at December 11 when the federal government made the announcement of disconnecting telecommunication subscribers without NIN, only 40 million Nigerians have been enrolled in the NIN database, including children.
By 8 am, the gate leading to the office of the NIMC in Alausa was already shut against the Nigerians who besieged the place to obtain their NIN.
Despite the time extension announced by the federal government for the registration of NIN till February 9 2021, the crowd at the Lagos office is still unrelenting.
TheNiche visited the Alausa office of the NIMC today, December 29, which is the first working day after Christmas to assess the situation of the NIN enrollment, and found that hundreds of NIN applicants were locked out of the premises, with only a few Nigerians admitted into the compound of the office which also houses the Lagos head office of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
The NSCDC officials were handy in managing the crowd that gathered both inside the building and outside, spilled the crowd as at 9am, had spilled to the major road leading to Ikeja.