Boluwatife Akinola
A message has been circulating across WhatsApp with the claim that the National Identity Management Commission’s (NIMC) correction portal is open.
The message includes different links for people to choose from for various corrections they want to make, such as name correction, date of birth correction, gender correction, and others.
Picture of the message
The viral WhatsApp forwarded message reads: “NIMC CORRECTION PORTAL IS OPEN. Due to high level of complain, the Federal Government have urge NIMC to open up their CORRECTION PORTAL and attend to the complaints of bonafide citizens of Nigeria and Correction”
Given the veracity of this claim and considering that the NIMC has a portal where you can modify your details, it has become imperative to verify the details contained in the circulating message.
VERIFICATION
What is the NIMC?
The National Identity Management Commission operates and regulates matters of national identity in Nigeria with services covering National Identification Number (NIN) enrolment and issuance, National e-ID card issuance, identity verification as well as data harmonisation and authentication.
According to the forwarded WhatsAPp message, errors like date of birth correction, name correction, phone number correction, retrieval of lost slips, address correction, NIN correction, and others can be corrected using the link provided in the claim.
The fact-checker clicked on the link, and it directed us to a page that asked, “Have you applied for this correction before?”
The researchers clicked “No” as a response and were directed to another page stating that our request had been approved and to click on CHECK to confirm eligibility for modification.
It was also noted on the page that “The number of applicants is limited, so act fast.”
However, under the page, there were 140,000 likes, 27,000 comments, and 19,000 shares. It was discovered that the names of the commenters were different but had the same profile picture.
We proceeded and clicked on the CHECK button, which took us to a page where we were asked to input our personal information and biodata.
N-VA further verified the URL link provided in the claim using website analytical tools such as Spyonweb and Whois. The analysis showed that the portal has no formal domain name of the NIMC or any related government agency and was last seen on April 11, 2020.
However, when the researcher visited the NIMC’s official handle on X (formerly Twitter), the organisation had already debunked the circulating message on their page.
Meanwhile, the NIMC also provided a correct link to the NIMC Self Service NIN modification portal.
CONCLUSION
The claim that the NIMC correction portal is FALSE. The links provided in the forwarded WhatsApp message is FALSE as it leads to a phishing website.
