The technical glitch suffered by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has entered the eighth day, leaving many Nigerians and organizations trying to verify their National Identification Numbers (NIN) stranded.
The glitch has affected operations of mobile network operators, as thousands of telecommunication subscribers nationwide, who want to retrieve their lost SIM cards or acquire new lines cannot.
The National Identity Management Commission said that the challenge resulted from the maintenance service being carried out by one of the commission’s network service providers. 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.
Other ministries agencies including the Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigeria Police Force, and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), who use the same service are also affected.
The major technical glitch has forced down multiple government websites for weeks, halting the services and information provided by the platforms, which means over 95 percent of government agencies and establishments are currently affected, as they operate under the Galaxy Backbone shared service platform.
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 way back 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.
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 organizations. She criticized the government’s apparent unhurried response to the outage.
“The budget office website for example is one of the platforms many organizations 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 organizations to shirk their duties.
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