FG Directs SIM Card be Linked to National Identity Number – NCC

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Twitter user wrote

Mr. Bashir, you are implying that millions of Nigerians have two weeks to PHYSICALLY CONVERGE AT DIFFERENT TELECOMS and NIMC posts to fix this during a pandemic that Nigeria only has 20 million expected vaccines for.

For your information, it took many people 3+ years to get https://t.co/1ed8YoKM9N

— Emmanuel (@ubongabasi) December 15, 2020

So, what act of economic self sabotage do we have today.

Oh. We want to biometrically register 50m people in 2 weeks in the middle of a pandemic & over the holidays or else we shut down half of the only major sector that has grown significantly over the last five years?

Cool.

— Nonso Obikili (@nonso2) December 16, 2020

There is no logical explanation that can stand scrutiny and stick for the controversial policy.

Anyone else thinking these NIN people had a budget and deadline to register everyone over the year but they chopped the money and didn’t bother to do it and now someone is asking them how far 2020 deadline so they decided let’s force everyone to do in 2 weeks or cancel their sim.

— maryam laushi (@MimieLaushi) December 16, 2020

The commission announced that the decision was arrived at after exhaustive discussions with all stakeholders, in a meeting convened by Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami.

IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW SIM REGISTRATION RULES

Following the earlier directive on the suspension of new SIM registration by network operators, the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) convened an urgent meeting of key stakeholders in the Communications industry on Monday, December 14, 2020.

The meeting had in attendance the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Management of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), as well as the CEOs and Management staff of all service providers in the industry.

At the meeting, the need to consolidate the achievements of last year’s SIM registration audit and improve the performance and sanity of the sector was exhaustively discussed and all stakeholders agreed that urgent drastic measures have now become inevitable to improve the integrity and transparency of the SIM registration process.

To this end, the following decisions were taken for immediate implementation by all Network Operators:

i.​Affirmation of the earlier directive to totally suspend registration of NEW SIMs by all operators.

ii.​Operators to require ALL their subscribers to provide valid National Identification Number (NIN) to update SIM registration records.

iii.​The submission of NIN by subscribers to take place within two weeks (from today December 16, 2020 and end by 30 December, 2020).

iv.​After the deadline, ALL SIMs without NINs are to be blocked from the networks.

v.​A Ministerial Task Force comprising the Minister and all the CEOs (among others) as members is to monitor compliance by all networks.

vi.​Violations of this directive will be met by stiff sanctions, including the possibility of withdrawal of operating license.

The general public is hereby urged to ensure that their NINs are captured in their SIM registration data.
All inconveniences which might be occasioned by this directive are deeply regretted.

Signed:
Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde
Director, Public Affairs
December 15, 2020