The Federal Government has instructed telecommunication providers in the country to block all outgoing calls on SIM cards that are yet to be linked with a National Identity Number (NIN), from today April 4 2022.

The directive was announced in a statement jointly signed by the Nigerian Communications Commission and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

With the directive, at least 72.8 million SIM cards subscribers risk being disconnected from telecommunication services.

So far, over 125 million SIM cards have had their NIN submitted for linkage, verification, and authentication; while the NIMC has issued over 78 million unique NIN till date.

The statement explained that NIN-SIM linkage had been extended on multiple occasions to allow Nigerians comply with the policy.