Nigerians have up to two weeks to register their mobile phone numbers with identity cards, in a move that the government said was meant to ensure it could trace people who use phones to commit crime.

Users who would not have registered their mobile phone numbers by the end of the deadline would be cut off.

But the directive has sparked an uproar, with many people saying the time is not enough.

In a country of over 200 million people, only 41.5 million Nigerians have registered for identity cards as of May 2020, according to the National Identity Management Commission.

The identity cards were rolled out in 2007.

Nigeria is estimated to have over 198 million active mobile lines.