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It has been gathered that soon the Federal Government of Nigeria will announce the deadline for Nigerians to link NIN (National Identity Number) with bank accounts.
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According to the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantomi, speaking at with correspondents at the State House after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, said the timelines for the mandatory linking of the NIN to bank accounts would soon be released.
You recall that recently FG announced the replacement of Bank Verification Number (BVN) with NIN on the bases that BVN is not backed by law.
Initially, Nigerians were expected to have successfully linked their NIN with their Subscriber Identity Module (SIMs) on or before December 16 to 30th with a warning that failure to adhere to the directive will attract a stiff sanction which could be SIM block or completely withdrawn from the respective network.
However, due to the pandemic, the high number of the crowd involved without excluding some technical lapses from the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and Nigerians outcry for deadline extension birthed the new deadline dated.
Three weeks extension was granted for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020, to January 19, 2021; six- week extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020, to February 9, 2021.
Despite that most people still couldn’t meet up which force the Federal Government to finally gave new deadline April 6, 2021, but stakeholders have urged the Federal Government to extend allow the exercise to run for, at least, six months and even remove the timeline in its entirety.
Pantami told reporters that the Council also approved about N8.9 billion for a new National ICT Park in the FCT to coordinate public and private ICT hubs in the country.
He said: “The wisdom behind the ICT Park is for it to be a centre where public and private ICT hubs are going to be coordinated by the Federal Government, where young innovators with disruptive ideas will be mentored and all what they need provided for. We will provide an enabling environment for them to utilise and come up with disruptive technologies.
“This is the first of its kind in Nigeria, we have so many parks and hubs but they are regional. This one will be central and will be a centre of job creation for our teaming youths. It will be a centre where technology will be developed and incubated. It will play a significant role in reducing unemployment and reduce the gap of unemployability.
“The Federal Executive Council has approved the memo and we are going to start off establishing it in Abuja and we hope Abuja is going to be another Silicon Valley in Nigeria,” he said.
