Breaking: Hundreds of Thousands of Nigerians May Lose Phone Lines

There is every likelihood that an unknown number of Nigerians but possibly running into millions would soon lose their mobile phone lines, and key contacts contained in them.

This follows a latest directive of the Nigerian Telecommunications Commission (NNC) to all telecom companies (TELCOS) operating in the country.

The Eagle reports that the NCC Today directed the mobile Telecommunication operators to deregister all phone lines without National Identity Numbers and those which NINs have not been verified.

The information came forth from a major telecoms operator, MTN, in a statement on the NSE right and the attached deadlines for implementation of the directive.

The statement which was signed by the Company’s Secretary, Uto Ukpanah, for MTN Nigeria said, “This is part of an industry-wide directive that requires phone lines for which the subscribers have not submitted their NINs to be barred on or before 28 February 2024. About NINs that have been submitted but not verified, such lines are to be barred on or before 29 March 2024, where five or more lines are linked to an unverified NIN.

“As part of these efforts, we are enhancing the capacity of our various service outlets to make the process smoother and more efficient. We are committed to ensuring that our subscribers comply with the NCC directive and will continue to work with the National Identity Management Commission to accelerate the NIN verification process,” he stated.

 “As a law-abiding corporate citizen and in line with our operating licence requirements, we are committed to complying with the industry-wide directive from the NCC and will provide further updates to investors on progress and potential impact with the release of FY 2023 results.”

This move of the MTN, likely to the followed by other telecoms operators is likely to affect an unknown number of Nigerians using their services  

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The Eagle reports that at least 51.3 million unique telecommunication devices reportedly did not have NIN as at May 2022.

An NCC document, titled, ‘Deployment of a Device Management System: Project Information Memorandum,’ gave the indication.

It said, “With more than 200 million active lines on the Nigerian telecommunication network (as of December 2021), there is great potential for the development of a DMS in the Nigerian market.

“It is estimated that there were approximately 132 million unique devices on the telecommunication network in 2020.”

That number Is expected to have progressively grown over the past two years, with many subscribers complaining of difficulty in obtaining and or linking their lines with their NIN

An Eagle correspondent who visited a branch of a leading commercial bank in Ikeja last week, heard a bank staff complaining of many potential account holders unable to provide an NIN.

He insisted that those who could not provide the number would be denied opportunity of opening an account with the company.

“Many of them were yet to provide their NIN, so I am keeping their applications aside”, he had grumbled to his colleague. 

These are against the background of the NIN-Subscriber Identity Module policy stating that all telecom subscribers must link their SIMs to their NINs.

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In the ‘Revised National Identity Policy for Sim Card Registration,’ the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, said, “Mandating the use of NIN for SIM card registration will accelerate the growth of the national identity database as the SIM card registration database is one of the largest databases holding the digital identity of Nigerians, including biometrics and other essential information on citizens.

“This will enable Nigeria to take giant strides towards improving national planning, overcoming security challenges and boosting our GDP.”