Telecommunication operators have begun preparations and arrangements towards migrating to the Virtual NIN platform in a bid to resolve the technical difficulties that have grounded its activities following a glitch in the National Identity Management Commission portal.

This is coming about nine days after a protracted standoff with NIMC over the implementation of the vNIN platform.

The PRESS had on Monday reported that the NIMC’s portal suffered a technical glitch that has affected the ability of telcos, banks, immigrations office as well as other government agencies to verify the National Identity Number of its customers.

The NIMC spokesperson in a chat with The PRESS had faulted telcos for refusing to migrate to the virtual NIN platform as directed by the commission.

However, in a recent development, a source at an MTN outlet in Lagos confirmed to our correspondent that sequel to a series of meeting, preparations and arrangements were in the offing to migrate to the vNIN platform in order to resume the provision of SIM-related services that has been grounded for more than a week.

The source said, “We’ve been having meetings. Our system was created to use searching by NIN. Now we have to upgrade our systems to be able to search with vNIN. That’s the meeting we’ve been having.

“The NIMC-improved NIN slip is the one that has a barcode, but we still need to be able to put it in the portal on our system. That’s what they are working on. We are trying to enable our system to be able to create the option of vNIN. What we have is search by document ID.

“There is no search by vNIN. There are other ways that we are also trying and some stores have been able to successfully do swap today but it’s for customers that have already linked their line (to their NIN). By tomorrow’s meeting, I believe we will finalise it.”

Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria announced to its customers on Wednesday that they would now be required to provide their Virtual NIN or the improved NIN slip for all SIM-related services.

The company disclosed this in a vNIN update flier. According to the company, SIM registration, replacement, mobile number portability, NIN linking, and 4G upgrade can only be done with vNIN or the improved NIN slip.

It said, “vNIN is a tokenised version of a person’s actual NIN, it is a 16-digit alphanumeric (ABCXYZ1249872DK…) NIN that customers will be required to generate either via NIMC mobile App, via the improved NIN slip with QR code for scanning using the NIMC mobile app or USSD channel for any SIM related services.

“The virtual NIN tokens are merchant-specific and expire after a set period of time (usually 72 hours). This means that a token generated for company MTN cannot be used or verified by company Airtel.”

The PRESS had reported that Galaxy Backbone, a government establishment responsible for providing tech support for the NIMC as well as other MDAs, had confirmed a technical fault which has prevented them from providing services to some of its customers.

According to a source in the company, the company will soon restore services as most of its customers using the platform NIMC is connected to are affected.

The source said, “The issue is currently being settled. We are working on it. Nothing is wrong, we had a downtime. Facebook went down for 24 hours. The downtime has lasted for three working days now, and we’ve been working on it since then.

“The truth is the downtime is currently being restored and we are almost done. It was a minor issue, but unfortunately it escalated at some point. We are working on it to ensure that all our customers are back up.

“All I can tell you is the services are currently being restored. Most of the customers on that particular platform are affected.”