Last updated on August 6th, 2023 at 07:06 am
The official website of the National Identity Management Commission crashed Wednesday, December 23, 2020, as millions of Nigerians attempted to access the portal.
The portal is meant to be the stop point for Nigerians who wanted detailed information about the registration for the ongoing mandatory National Identity Number (NIN).
The first step is the printing of NIN enrolment form on the official portal, but millions of them were disappointed as the website was inaccessible.
At 1:09 am InfomediaNG checked www.nimc.gov.ng and www3.nimc.gov.ng , “This site can’t be reached” was the error displayed on the screen, showing configuration error or due to huge traffic which shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Inaccessibility of NIMC portal is one of the problems confronting the commission saddled with the responsibility of managing millions of data
What does This site can’t be reached mean?
According to troubleshootingcentral.com, several factors could be responsible for “this site can’t be reached error”
One of such is because of an underlying issue occurring with the NIMC domain name system (DNS) “server and the issue either needs to be fixed or it needs to be reset,” TroubleShooting says
What this means on the part of NIMC
As at October 2020, the active subscribers for mobile telephony in Nigeria was 83.3m for MTN, representing 40.14%, Airtel had 56.2m (27.08%, Globacom got 55.1m (26.53%), while 9mobile had 13million subscribers, representing 6.24%, Nigerian data company firm said in a tweet.
Going by this figure, everyone expected the management of the NIMC to have gone for the highest bandwidth so as to accommodate the millions of Nigerians who would besiege its portal.
It also showed ill-preparedness of the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy who threatened to block lines that are not linked to NIN.
NIMC Spokesman lied
On December 22, 2020, The Punch had quoted the NIMC Spokesman Kayode Adegoke as saying NIMC portal didn’t crash.
He said the National Identity Management Commission was upgrading its website for optimum performance, promising that nimc.gov.ng, would be restored Tuesday, December 22
“Our site didn’t crash. We are upgrading the site, we are migrating it to a higher and better platform where information security will be topnotch.
“More users will be able to be on the site per time. It will also be able to accommodate more information. Information security is key. The site will be back today,” he said.
A strategist analyst Adejo Odaudu described the poor management and failure of NIMC to keep its promises as, “ bad regulatory decision”
https://twitter.com/samodaudu/status/1341540963206967296?s=20
