Someone recently said that suffering is tired of Nigerians. Whether the statement was a gaffe or not, majority of Nigerians would at least, agree that suffering is now a household name under the Buhari administration.
There's hardly any statement, decision or action taken by the Buhari administration since 2015, that can in truth, be considered to be beneficial to the poor masses who seem to have now accept their misfortunes in good faith, and learned to live with their sufferings.
At a time Nigerians are struggling to get their lives back on track following a year of horror which saw them forced indoors for months without care whether they survive or not, the Buhari administration in its trademark fashion, requested Nigerians link their GSM sim cards to their National Identification Number (NIN), or risk being blocked.
Now that aside, forget the pain and hustle of getting to do what the lords of the land demanded. Now the question is, how does this latest trouble benefit the people?
Well, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantai, seemed to have answered the question perfectly.
In a recent statement by the Minister on Monday, he urged Nigerians to do everything possible to secure their National Identity Numbers (NINs), and to desist from selling their NINs or allowing others to use their NINs for registration.
Why? Because "any action committed with the SIM, good or bad, it will be officially traced and attached to the NIN owner," the minister said.
Surely, I didn't have to suffer the troubles of obtaining a NIN and linking it to my sims only to be threatened right?
Well, this is the concerns shared by many Nigerians from which the below comments were selected:
Opeyemi Akinluyi said, "Most of these Buhari appointees lack creative and critical thinking. Only thing they can offer the citizens is to trace them with their NIN and not for anything that would improve their social wellbeing. What a pity!"
Tolayo olorunsogo said, " What is clearly known to me is that, we will be the one to liberate ourselves from the hand of the folks. You can't trace the line of kidnappers and boko haram sponsors but you can trace the line of innocent citizens and oppress them. The judgement day is near. Watch out."
Abdul Waziri said, "This NIN thing will make criminals flourish under the disguise that it's not their NIN number on a sim when committing crimes, now stealing phones will be more lucrative than before the price of the phone won't matter but the active NIN and sim card on the phone."
So, what's unusual here? Wouldn't you be actually surprised if the Buhari administration said it would utilize the NIN, to distribute palliatives and or stimulus packages to Nigerians?