Banks, telcos, others groan over NIMC system collapse

By ADEBAYO OBAJEMU

The websites and online presences of major government agencies were disrupted for days penultimate week has continued as a major technical glitch forced down multiple Nigerian government websites for halting the essential services’ information flow supplied by the platforms.
As of last weekend, six websites, including those of the presidential office and the National Identity Management Commission, were also touched by the disruptions. Many critical services such as banks’ registration, GSM SIM registration, JAMB registration etc have all been disrupted, forcing these Nigerians to pay for these services.
Mr. Taye, a car mechanist in Itire Lagos, told our correspondent that he lost his telephone lines a week ago and all efforts to retrieve the lines have proved futile as the telcos have resorted to charging customers around N3000 to get scheduling number of the day to visit the Friendship centre on invitation to get their lines back.
“I have lost a lot of business since then. My client in U.S. called my lines for two days without success before calling a friend to pass the message.. ”
Throughout this period, NIMC was temporarily unavailable as telecom firms, banks, others joined other government agencies in suffering service failure.
BusinessHallmark’s Investigations showed that a great number of mobile telecommunications subscribers across the length and breadth of the country desirous of retrieving their lost Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards could not do so.
Also, subscribers in great number who wanted to acquire new lines were not able to do so due to the unavailability of the National Identity Management Commission’s NIN Verification Service (NVS).
Dr. Kola Awode, an identity management expert told Business Hallmark that “the affected NIMC portal which engulfed in technical glitch, has great ramifications for businesses and government agencies, even the functioning of government in general.”
Remember, this portal is an enabler for banks, telecom firms, the Nigerian Immigration Service, and other organisations to verify the National Identity Number of their customers before attending to them, in line with the Federal Government’s directive.
“So the disruptions have caused significant damage to government business and banks, among other agencies”, he said.
Responding to complaints from users, MTN Nigeria said the “NIMC application is currently unavailable. Please bear with us as we are unable to process Sim swap and upgrade requests due to external challenges. We appreciate your understanding and will post an update once this has been resolved.’’
Those at the receiving end of these glitches have complained bitterly.
In reaction, NIMC in its statement confirmed the technical issues with its portal which it attributed to maintenance.
The statement from NIMC reads, “The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) wishes to inform the general public that its NIN verification Service (NVS) is temporarily unavailable due to the maintenance service being carried out by one of the Commission’s network service providers.
“The NIMC wants to assure the public that verification and authentication services would be restored once the maintenance is concluded.
“The Commission apologises for any inconvenience this might cause our esteemed customers, as all hands are on deck to ensure speedy restoration.
“Meanwhile, the public can make use of the alternative Tokenisation verification platform.”
NIMC believed the disruptions should not be used as an excuse by telecoms, banks and other agencies for not attending to customers.
Kayode Adegoke, spokesperson for NIMC said that nobody should be excluded from any service under the guise of non-verification of NIN.
Adegoke stated that, “Even though the NIN verification service (NVS) might be down due to maintenance by one of our service providers of its infrastructure, the alternative platform – TOKENISATION is up and running,” the spokesperson said.
“There is the need to ask questions from the Telcos, NIS, Banks and others on the reason for turning down customers in the guise of NIN not being verified due to the temporary unavailability of the NVS, while the alternative platform-Tokenization is working!!!
“NIMC NVS platform is not the only verification platform available for use, but Tokenisation which protects the identity of NIN holders is also up and running!!!
“And for accurate information, it is not a NIMC problem, rather, a government service provider has embarked on maintenance of its infrastructure, which has affected most government agencies that rely on it for the provision of IT service. But for us in NIMC, the TOKENIZATION is available for the verification of the NIN before rendering services.
Agencies also affected by the disruptions include 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).
Checks by BusinessHallmark showed that the internet way-back machine, which crawls and archives web pages, has revealed 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. The Open Treasury site was last active on December 21, 2021.
Recall that the website of the identity management body, NIMC, abruptly stopped functioning on February 5, putting thousands of Nigerians who lost their phone SIM cards from in a quandary as they could not retrieve their National Identity Numbers (NIN).
Though, NIMC later apologised to the public for inconvenience the action may have caused, it nevertheless put the blame on its network providers, saying there was a maintenance activity.
The spokesperson of the Budget Office of the Federation, Afolabi Olajuwon, told the press that the hitch was as a result of a system breakdown that affected Galaxy Backbone Limited, the agency responsible for managing most government’s website.
“The issue is not within the purview of our office. It is almost a nationwide issue because it affects not just the Budget Office website but those of other agencies managed by Galaxy Backbone,” he said.
Galaxy Backbone Limited, which is saddled with the responsibility of managing the internet facilities and websites of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the federal government, on last Monday said it was having technical challenges with its “hosting service platform”.
A statement on its Twitter handle, said “We have 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.
All affected sites had an error message that said, “This site can’t be reached.”