- FG’s unwise putting of the cart before the horse
The new policy to disconnect phones not linked to National Identity number (NIN) by December 30 is already destabilizing citizens and stimulating viral national controversy.
Following the announcement by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami, the minister also announced that SIMs that are not linked to National Identification Numbers by December 30 shall be disconnected. The policy, believed to have arisen from efforts to consolidate achievements of SIM registration audit in 2019 and to improve the integrity of the SIM registration process, has already generated criticism from individuals and organizations.
Relatedly, the House of Representatives under matters of urgent national importance has called on the government to extend the deadline: “As laudable as the idea behind the policy may seem, the timing is very wrong because Nigerians have not been properly sensitized, as only a few educated persons who bother to read the dailies might have heard about this instruction…If the NCC is allowed to carry out this directive, it will bring about untold hardship as millions of subscribers will be disconnected this yuletide period which could spell disaster in an already volatile nation like ours.”
We fully agree with the government on the need to improve government’s efforts to protect lives and property of citizens. And we are in full accord with the view of the Minority leader of the House of Representatives that policies designed to boost the nation’s security ought to carry a human face. The policy to disconnect millions of mobile phones that fail by December 30 to link their national identity numbers to their SIMs, just 15 days after announcement of the policy lacks sensitivity to the needs and concerns of citizens. Certainly, about 40 million citizens with NINs need and deserve a more realistic deadline.
We do have issues with the federal government’s refusal to countenance complaints of citizens, legislators, and civil society organizations about the insensitivity of deadline to complete NIN/SIM registration by December 30. The social circumstances of the country at this time of the year are already too dismal for a policy that seems set to exchange one form of national insecurity for another.
One, the oppressive deadline of the minister of communications has come at a wrong time. The country is undergoing the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic; state governments have begun another round of lockdown. Any policymaker that needs to see why such a policy should not have been made at this time ought to pay a visit to the Ikeja office of Nigerian Identity Management Commission, where hordes of people with little attention to pandemic protocols are struggling to obtain NIN, out of panic that they may not be able to reach their loved ones during the Christmas and New Year season.
Two, the Minister of Communications and Director of NIMC ought to have avoided making a rushed policy with little consideration for the people and with high likelihood for confusion and consternation, just like a similar policy earlier to force students to use NIN to prequalify for JAMB and UTME exams.
Both agencies behind the new order should learn from an American proverb, “If it is not broken, do not fix it.” It will be more beneficial for the government to ensure that the NINs of less than 30% of the population already with government are transferred to accredited agencies that should have them for security reasons. In other polities, transfer of such data from one agency to another would have been done by government agencies in possession of such critical data. A time that the country is hobbled by the pandemic is a wrong one for any draconian policy that can deny citizens the joy of leaving in a multireligious society.
