Technical glitches experienced by the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, grounded service operations of banks, telecommunications firms and others using the portal for verification.
The NIMC, which provides National Identity Numbers (NIN) for verification service in both banks and telecommunication companies have made it impossible for a quite large number of people across the country who want to register their new purchased Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards, those seeking to retrieved their lost SIM cards, and those who want to link their NIN with their Bank Verification Number, BVN due to the unavailability of the National Identity Management Commission’s NIN Verification Service (NVS).
This became one of the requirements needed by the identified bodies following the directive given by the Federal Government to organisations to always verify the National Identity Number of their customers before attending to them.
NIMC in a statement confirmed the technical issues with its portal which is attributed to maintenance service being carried out by one of the Commission’s network service providers.
The commission while apologizing for any inconveniences it might have caused their esteemed customers assured the public that verification and authentication services would be restored once the maintenance is concluded as all hands are on deck to ensure speedy restoration.
While MTN Nigeria is urging their customers to bear with them as they were unable to provide the support they need over the technical glitch on the NIMC portal, the commission gave an alternative which the public can use, named Tokenisation verification platform
However, the Spokesman of NIMC, Kayode Adegoke, claimed that there is more to why the banks, Telecommunications companies, NIS, and others are turning down customers in the guise of NIN not being verified due to the temporary unavailability of the NVS, while the alternative platform- Tokenization is working!!!
As at the time of reporting this, the downtime of the NIMC portal is said to have marked the sixth day making the telecommunication companies in the country suspend SIM card replacement and acquisition services.