Nigerians, telcos, govt agencies stranded as NIMC glitch enters eighth day

• We are working to restore service outage, says Galaxy Backbone
• FG urges banks, telcos to use alternative platform over NIN portal breakdown
• Internet subscription declined 8% in 2021 over NIN registration

The technical glitch suffered by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has entered the eighth day, leaving many Nigerians and organisations stranded regarding verifications of their National Identification Numbers (NIN) and associated issues.

The glitch has affected some operations of mobile network operators, as thousands of telecommunication subscribers nationwide, who want to retrieve their lost Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards or acquire new lines are temporarily left stranded.

The NIMC, said on Monday that the challenge resulted from the maintenance service being carried out by one of the commission’s network service provider. According to the commission, all hands are on deck to ensure service is restored soon.

The hitch affecting the NIN portal was caused by a technical problem with the Hosting Service Platform of Galaxy Backbone Limited, a Federal Government agency that provides Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services.

Some other Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), which are customers to Galaxy Backbone Limited are facing same challenge. They include Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigeria Police Force and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC).

Over 95 per cent of government agencies and establishments operate under the Galaxy Backbone shared service platform.

The major technical glitch has forced down multiple government websites for weeks, halting the services and information provided by the platforms.

At least, six websites, including those of the presidential office and the NIMC, were affected as of Tuesday afternoon. All affected sites had an error message that said: “This site can’t be reached.”

Other affected sites were those of the Budget Office of the Federation, Open Treasury, Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Nigeria Police Force (NPF), and the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF).

The Internet wayback machine, which archives web pages, showed that the budget office website was last active on January 29. The police website and the State House site were last accessible on February 1, while the websites of the OSGF and the NCAA last functioned on January 20 and January 27 respectively.

HOWEVER, Galaxy Backbone Limited, in a statement signed by its Head, Corporate Communications, Chidi Okpala, yesterday, appealed to Nigerians to bear with the company, saying the issue is getting the required attention.

The statement reads: “The management of Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) regrets the temporary outage of some of its services and the inconvenience being experienced by some of its customers across the country.

“Across the organisation, the highest priority classification has been assigned and all hands are on deck to ensure resolution is achieved within the shortest possible time.

“At the time of this statement, GBB has put together a highly skilled technical team of experienced engineers and applications experts to not just solve this current issue but put in place all the necessary structures to ensure that such an incident never occurs again in the future. While a good number of the services have been restored, efforts are being made to restore all the other services of its customers.

“In the meantime, and since this incident occurred, GBB has continued to notify and reach out to all its valued customers and will continue to do so to provide the necessary updates required until all the services affected are completely restored.”

The Federal Government had budgeted over N19 billion for software services in its 2022 budget. A project executive at the Centre for Journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID), Ijeoma Okereke-Adagba, said the failure of several government sites has seriously affected the functions of many public and private organisations. She criticised the government’s apparent unhurried response to the outage.

“The budget office website for example is one of the platforms many organisations like the CJID rely on to carry out their work. It’s barely a month since the 2022 national budget was uploaded before the site went down. Access to information is critical for any democratic government,” she said.

MEANWHILE, the Federal Government has said there is no justification for some commercial banks and telecommunication providers to fail attending to their customers over the breakdown of the country’s identity portal.

The government, through the NIMC, also said the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) had no reason for refusing to attend to international passport seekers on the ground that its officials could not access NIMC’s portal.

The government had made it compulsory for Nigerians to supply their unique identity numbers otherwise known as NIN before they can access certain services offered by some private companies and government agencies.

However, NIMC’s portal has been down since last week, and the development has affected the issuance of international passports, account opening at banks and access to telecommunication services.

But NIMC chided the banks and telcos, as well as the NIS, for blaming it for their inability to offer services to their customers. NIMC, in a statement by its spokesperson, Kayode Adegoke, said it was an unreasonable action for the organisations to shirk their duties.

The commission said the organisations had an alternative platform through which they could render services. The alternative platform according to NIMC is TOKENISATION. “Tokenisation is up and working. No one should be debarred of any service on the guise of NIN not being verified.”

THE number of active Internet subscriptions saw a decline by eight per cent at 141.9 million in 2021 from 154.3 million in 2020, data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has showed.

The year 2021 started on a promising note with 151.2 million subscribers, although after a mild two per cent decline from the previous year. The numbers saw a continuous dip from February to July and picked up slightly by 0.35 per cent in August from 139.7 to 140.2 million.

Despite the Federal Government’s policy that temporarily banned the sale and activation of new SIM cards, which saw the first increase in Internet subscriptions in August, the steady but minimal monthly growth recorded in the last four months of 2021 is supported by increased SIM card sales following the lifting of the ban on new card registrations.

Breakdown of the NCC data shows that MTN Nigeria, in the review period maintained the telecom with the highest number of subscribers at 58.8 million. Globacom, Airtel and 9mobile closed the year with 39.5, 37.5, and 5.7 million subscribers respectively.