The Telecommunications Operators in Nigeria under the umbrella body of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, ALTON, have announced that it would on February 28, 2024, disconnect Subscriber Identification Modules, SIMs not connected to the National Identity Number.
The announcement was made by the chairman of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, on Tuesday.
Adebayo said the directive to deactivate SIMs not linked to NIN is from the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC.
He explained that the implication is that subscribers of Nigeria’s Mobile Network Operators, including MTN, Airtel, and Globacom, whose SIMs are not linked to NIN, will be deactivated.
“The implication is that those who do not have their SIMs linked to the National Identity Number or whose lines have been linked but are yet to be verified need to do otherwise; otherwise, they will be disconnected.
“You know that it is a government directive; it is not our decision; if you read the press statement, the Nigerian Communication Commission directed that we should withdraw the service. We only have to abide by the regulatory directive. We are concerned about the directive because of the number of active subscribers on the networks, but we can only ask people to abide by it because it is a government directive”, he said.
The development came after the federal government issued several NIN-SIM linkage deadlines.
Recall that in December 2020, the federal government introduced the SIM-NIN Linkage policy to curtail insecurity and enshrine sanity in the telecoms sector.
The linking involves validating the NIN with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and matching the subscriber’s NIN records with the SIM registration information (verification) to ensure proper subscriber identification.
Adebayo further said, “following the directive of the NCC, which took effect on 4 April 2022, all MSISDNs for which the subscribers failed to submit their NINs were placed on outgoing call restriction only, and the affected subscribers were advised to verify their NINs before being reactivated.
” Despite the limited service restriction, millions of subscribers have yet to submit their NINs for verification. Consequently, the NCC issued this directive dated 15 December 2023 for telecommunications operators to commence full network barring of the affected MSISDNs on the effective dates.
