The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has revealed the reason behind the inaccessibility of its verification portal by Nigerians.
Bibian Anekwe News gathered that millions of Nigerians who are seeking to retrieve their lost Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards or get new lines have been unable to do so for the past five days due to a downtime experienced by the NIMC portal.
The NIMC verification portal allows telecom operators to verify and link the National Identity Number (NIN) of their customers to their SIMs in line following the Federal Government’s directive.
Also, the verification portal allows the Nigerian Immigration Service, financial institutions and other government agencies to verify the NIN of their customers before attending to them.
The telcos are required to synchronise their SIM registration portals with the NIMC portal in order to verify the details of their subscribers but cannot do that due to a technical glitch in the commission’s server.
Reacting to the development in a statement, the NIMC said the reason for the downtime on the verification portal is due to maintenance being executed by its service provider.
NIMC, in the statement titled ‘NIMC NIN verification service temporarily unavailable”, added that verification and authentication services would be restored once the maintenance is concluded.
The commission advised Nigerians to make use of the alternative tokenisation verification platform pending the conclusion of the maintenance ongoing.
It, therefore, apologised for any inconveniences this might cause Nigerians who needed to use the portal.
The statement reads, “The National Identity Management Commission wishes to inform the general public that its NIN Verification Service is temporarily unavailable due to the maintenance service being carried out by one of the Commission’s network service providers.
“The NIMC wants to assure the public that verification and authentication services would be restored once the maintenance is concluded.
“The commission apologises for any inconveniences this might cause our esteemed customers, and all hands are on deck to ensure speedy restoration. Meanwhile, the public can make use of the alternative tokenisation verification platform.”
Bibian Anekwe News
