A total of 56.18 million National Identity Numbers have been collected by the mobile network operators and submitted for linkage with their respective Subscriber Identification Modules.

Also, the ongoing NIM-SIM integration exercise has been extended by eight weeks, the Federal Government announced on Tuesday.

It said the new deadline was now April 6, 2021.

Director, Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission, Ikechukwu Adinde, who disclosed this in a statement issued in Abuja, said the extension was conveyed by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami.

Pantami conveyed the message during the meeting of the Ministerial Taskforce on NIN-SIM registration which held on the 1st of February, 2021.

He said the extension was to give Nigerians and legal residents more time to integrate their NIN with the SIM.

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On December 15, 2020, the Federal Government declared that after December 30, 2020, all SIMs that were not registered with valid NINs on the network of telecommunications companies would be blocked.

It later extended the December 30, 2020 deadline following widespread opposition against the earlier announcement and gave three weeks’ extension for subscribers with NIN from December 30, 2020 to January 19, 2021.

It also gave six weeks’ extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020 to February 9, 2021, but many organisations had called for further deadline extension.