WAKE UP: SIM Card-NIN Link: The sabotaging handlers and nonchalant citizenship

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Dr. Isa Ibrahim Pantami, Nigeria's Minister of Communications and Digital Economy.

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By BASHIR ADEFAKA

Honourable Minister, before “I off my Mic”, to borrow from the words of some legislators of the days of yore, let me bring to your attention that many of the centres you or your predecessor, Dr. Adebayo Shittu, allowed to handle National Identity Card Registration are corrupt and sabotaging the all-important national exercise. They need overhauling and I will talk from the case study of Lagos and Ogun states.

 

On the job side in the last one week, I have partaken in writing reports of interested groups and individuals about why the cries against Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s directives to PTOs, Private Telecoms Operators to suspend registration of SIM Cards should not be. The noise heightened with last Wednesday December 16, 2020 follow up order by Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ibrahim Pantami, which further strengthened the ICC’s earlier directives but with a stronger difference.

Minister Pantami had ordered all GSM subscribers in the country to link their SIM Cards to their NINs, National Identity Numbers within two weeks beginning from that date of December 16.  The stronger difference from the NCC’s directives is that, anyone that fails to comply with the link process and has not his or her SIM Card and NIN linked before expiration of the deadline risks having his or her SIM Card blocked.

Sadly, and expectedly so by the nature and character of some vocal Nigerians, there was an uproar of complaints. More saddening, those who cry more of the woes are people, who should support government and its agencies in enlightening the public, vulnerable like ours, to understand the works and goals of policies. They have easy access to the media: print, electronic and digital. But from the opportunity of easy access they have to those channels of public communication, of what benefit have they been.  They create more confusion than the vulnerable masses would ordinarily have, hence they make the simple exercise of linking the SIM to NIN complex for people to understand. The time people should then spend in complying with government directives, which is for their own good particularly security of self and of the nation, they use to organise agitations, filing cases in court against government. So sad!

Lest I forget, why must we shout all the times against any government policy?  Are we trying to say that those we eulogized yesterday as best brains in the society are no longer the same brains we had talked about now that they are in government? And to justify their criticisms, some of us would say, “The moment they get to government, they no longer remain the same”. How? But you that voted them into government and left them alone to governance only to stand at distance and be playing the activist role of seeing only negative and no positive about them, how the same have you always been?

What I think is this, there is problem somewhere and we are the problem. We have an impression that government is evil so anytime anyone goes in there, he becomes infested. Just like what we turn politics to be: A dirty game. For how long do we want to continue to play God and still proudly expect to prevail?  If we don’t play God, we should go and know that government is an agency of God and whoever betrays it, either the occupier or the represented, betrays God and there are always the consequences for every action. That should be stuck with us.

That is why, in this country we glorify irrelevance. Here we up music industry more manufacturing so, in our own eyes, all textile industries, tyres industries such as Dunlop, Michelin, cotton and other industries, even Nigeria Airways, Railways, Volkswagen, Peugeot, etc, that made Nigeria’s Naira stronger than America’s Dollars were sold off to people who, in turn, collapsed them.

Since President Muhammadu Buhari came in 2015, he has made himself clear about what he wanted to achieve: To take Nigeria from partial political and economic independence that it has suffered from America and former colonial leaders to a fullfedge independent nation filled with all elements of development. Industrialisation at its best since technology is not learned in university but in industry, to borrow from the words of Engr. Edmund Kaine, former Director General PRODA.

The President started with effort to revive the refineries that only him ever built for the country, some politically established militants of Niger Delta damaged the revived refineries. Attempt to use the military to check the militants was vehemently opposed by states’ governments, community leaders of the region with human rights lawyers and their media collaborators fighting to paint it as Fulani trying to oppress the “owners” of the oil that “feeds” Nigeria. As if Niger Deltans can actually survive by drinking oil alone, that is if the North truly is the problem of the oil communities. Recent revelations in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) now says it all.

For decades problem of Nigeria has been made to look like complex until Buhari came and we all now see it is the simplest thing to solve: Just remove corruption and instill discipline across governments and citizenry. Some loud Nigerians turned this easy task to a very difficult one by their resistance and so, #CorruptionFightBack set in. Since then, insecurity has engulfed the space of the nation. That was how we are where we are. What then is the way out?

In Yoruba parlance, it is said that when trees fall on trees, we start by removing the ones on the top.  The Government represents our powers as Peoples of Nigeria.  We can therefore not be justified to stand aloof while government goes on with state administration and we are merely useful as opposition to the same government we installed, either willingly or unwillingly.  But what most Nigerians do especially now is play opposition to government and we are mainly professionals and not political party players. Who then should be blamed for our woes if not we?

Insecurity?  In playing opposition to government, some people arrogantly say “This government cannot tell the number of its citizens talk less it can know the number of people who enter or go out of the country within given period.” This they blame for the insecurity in the land and, frankly, it is a reasonable criticism. And the government, being representative of the people, did not disappoint me when it accepted that point as raised.

As it stands, the Buhari-led All Progressive Congress (APC) government inherited the strengthened National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) from Goodluck Jonathan-led Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government and decided to use it as a unified system to get Nigerians’ data harmonized. That has been said since 2015, over five years ago. If we are not nonchalant citizens, five years of Buhari administration should be enough for us to have achieved our NIN Registration all round. Here we are, still agitating so order of using NIN to link our SIM Card will not work. And in doing that, Boko Haram terrorists, bandits and other criminals working with foreign interest to make our country ungovernable rejoice. Who then are we?

While we tell the citizens where they err, I ernestly want to seize this stage of my writing to speak to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ibrahim Pantami.

Honourable Minister, before “I off my Mic”, to borrow from the words of some legislators of the days of yore, let me bring to your attention that many of the centres you or your predecessor, Dr. Adebayo Shittu, allowed to handle National Identity Card Registration are corrupt and sabotaging the all-important national exercise. They need overhauling and I will talk from the case study of Lagos and Ogun states.

I registered for my own NIN in 2014 the same day I captured for my International Passport and that was at Lagos State Command Headquarters of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). That was and is still where NIMC office is located in the state. It was very highly effective. I filled in all the information required of me, did the computer photographic capturing and collected my temporary slip same day.

Honourable Minister, that has since changed. To get this thing done now is through connection, as staff handling the process are daily sabotaging the process by deliberately creating artificial queues at centres of registration to enable them justify their swindle of citizens. Every aspect of the system is corrupt now.  If NIN is compulsory and there is a deadline of two weeks, in all honesty Honourable Minister, not only should it be free but also, it should be made easy to do. Yes, I have always blamed the nonchalance of citizens for reason people still claim they don’t have the all-important umber five years after President Buhari energised it, six years after Jonathan rejigged it and 17 years after Olusegun Obasanjo launched it.  But the handlers themselves also aided the nonchalant disposition of the people towards the civic right.

So sad to note, in a particular Local Government Area in Lagos, non-receipted N6,000 was charged in September this year to register citizens for NIN. Should we say Federal Government did wrong to have decentralised registration process into such local government council centres? No. It tells about the people of Nigeria. Unfortunately, those who willingly pay these fraudulent charges and remain in their conspiracy of silence were the same who led in the #ENDSARS movement saying Buhari-Must-Go. I then asked: Is Buhari Chairman of the Local Government? No answer.

Another one, even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has never seen anything good about President Muhammadu Buhari and has criticised him over security issues in the country, his Bells University of Technology NIN registration centre is also involved in this corruption as, right from security gate, they charge N3,000 per registration. This is a fact.

Now, if all GSM subscribers must link their SIM Cards to NIN and those charges with the responsibility to register people for the National Identity Number are charging as high as N3,000 like the Obasanjo’s school centre  and N6,000 it happened at that Lagos Local Government secretariats centre, how then do we conveniently blame people, who are hiding under the wicked corruption of these centres to advance their anti-Nigeria agenda?

My advice: Federal Government should not listen to those civil societies, lawyers and individuals asking for cancelation of the registration but should seize the opportunity of this latest ultimatum to reorganise the process with a view to ensuring that citizens easily access the exercise without wicked creation of queues that usually demoralise people from partaking.  The FG should, as a good father body of the nation, temper Justice with mercy by please extending the ultimatum by day three weeks so that there will be no excuse for anybody or group not to be responsible partaker in effort towards rediscovering our great nation. Above all, there must be probe of the entire exercise since it started in 2014 or thereabouts and now with clear terms of reference to expose those responsible for the sabotage that led to why Nigerians have been adequately covered in those years. It is important. Either now or never.

*WAKE UP is opinion article column of Lagos Journalist and digital media publisher, Alhaji Bashir Adefaka. Reach him via WhatsApp: 08163323906.


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