NIMC website down as Nigerians rush to enroll for NIN

The official website of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has gone down as Nigerians struggle to obtain their National Identity Number (NIN).

The website has been down since the late hours of Monday.

This newspaper reported how hundreds of people gathered at a registration office in Lagos Monday as residents struggled to register for the NIN.

This followed a directive by the government for Nigerians to link their NINs to their telecommunication SIM cards within two weeks.

That deadline has now been extended by a minimum of three weeks, according to a NCC statement.

NIMC had shut down its Lagos centre, citing a large number of people converging there who refused to adhere to the COVID-19 protocols.

The crowd had stormed the NIMC office at Alausa, Ikeja, trying to beat the deadline for the linkage of their sim with the NINs.

READ ALSO: Nigeria govt extends NIN registration deadline for SIM cards

Nigerians were thrown into anxiety last week Tuesday when the federal government directed telecommunication operators to block numbers without NIN in two weeks.

The NIMC website had details of the Commission and information on the enrollment process.

“Kindly download the enrolment form, fill and take it to any of our centers to be enrolled into the National Identity Database and be issued the National Identification Number (NIN),” a tweet said.

Meanwhile, NIMC is yet to officially react to the difficulty in accessing its services.
Its services were not restored at the time of this report.