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.
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.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
