By Akinmola Bamikole
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) added 1.9 million new identification numbers to the enrollment database for the National Identity Numbers (NIN) in November. This moved the number from 90.68 NINs in October to 92.63 million a month after.
The latest statistics from the NIMC, which revealed this, showed that more men enrolled in the exercise. Specifically, the gender distribution showed that 52.1 million people, representing 56 percent of Nigerians so far captured in the NIN database, are male. The remaining 40.5 million (44 percent) are female.
According to the statistics, Lagos State has so far recorded the highest number of enrolments in the country with 10.3 million Nigerians captured in the State. This was followed by Kano State, which recorded eight million registered NIN.
Other states that made the top 10 in terms of the number of enrolments include Kaduna with 5.4 million, Ogun with 3.8 million, Oyo with 3.6 million, FCT with 3.2 million, Katsina with 3.1 million, Rivers with 2.7 million, Delta with 2.4 million, and Bauchi also with 2.4 million NIN registrations.
According to NIMC data, the 10 bottom states with the lowest NINs issued are Zamfara with 1.6 million total enrolments as of November, Akwa Ibom with 1.5 million, Imo with 1.5 million, Enugu with 1.5 million, Yobe with 1.3 million, Taraba with 1.3 million, Cross River with 1 million, Ekiti with 971,712, Ebonyi with 744,869, and Bayelsa with 583,323.
Meanwhile, telecoms operators that lost over 10 million customers to the Federal Government mandated NIN enrolment exercise since 2020, when the numbers were barred from the network for not being linked, are gradually getting their customers back to the network and activating new Subscribers Identification Module (SIM) cards.
In fact, from January to October 2022, about 17 million lines have either been reactivated or newly activated. In October, the quartet of MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile shared 2.4 million lines, which were added to the network.
According to the telcos, more subscribers were getting new SIMs in a bid to circumvent restrictions on SIMs that had not been linked with their NINs.
According to the latest subscription updates, the October edition from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), MTN had the largest share, activating two million telephone lines. The telecoms firm had 81.2 million users in October, which increased to 83.2 in November. Globacom is still second with 59.6 million users in November from 59.3 million in October. It added 241,931 new lines.
Airtel ranked third by adding 266,005 users. It moved from 58.4 million to 58.6 million. 9mobile however, fell in the month under review. It lost 71,282 subscribers, moving from 12.8 million to 12.7 million.
Telecoms density also increased by 1.3 per cent, moving from 111.1 per cent in September to 112.4 per cent in October. The NCC explained that from March 2019, teledensity is calculated based on a population estimate of 190 million, up from 140 million.
Further analysis of the NCC data showed that Internet subscriptions through the GSM platforms, Fixed Wired, Internet Service Providers and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) dropped by 74,820. On the contrary, broadband subscriptions, however, leaped by 0.46 per cent in the period under review with 86.9 million people now enjoying the service.
