Communications (Nigeria market)

2022: Nigeria blocks 75 million cellular subscribers that are not in the state bank

On April 4, 2022, the government Nigeria ordered mobile companies to ban outgoing calls from phone numbers not associated with a national identification number (NIN) in order to combat extortion and abduction.

The Ministry of Communications and the Digital Economy ordered operators to ban all telephone calls to unbound SIM cards in the country. This order will enter into force on April 4, 2022, according to a statement by the National Communications Commission. In December 2020, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered that all telephone lines be tied to the identification number in order to stop the increase in abductions in the northern region of the country.

75 million cellular subscribers are blocked in Nigeria, which are not in the state base

Representatives of some telecom operators confirmed receiving letters from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and have since begun to ban outgoing calls from all unrelated SIM cards on their networks. Kidnappers usually call the relatives of their victims from unregistered subscriber identification modules, or SIM cards, which the country's authorities cannot track. The latest solution means that about 75 million phone numbers not tied to the national identification number will not be able to make calls.

President Buhari allowed them to do so without our intervention as a ministry. Therefore, having received such permission, the NCC transferred through my office to all relevant institutions for this permission. Thus, they can obtain information from the database without the need for our permission. But since then, they (security agents) have never contacted me with complaints or a request to provide information from the database. The only person who wrote me the letter was the Minister of Defense, saying that we should try to finish work on NIN-SIM on time, "said Pantami.

According to the administration, out of 198 million telephone numbers in the country, 125 million SIM cards were checked and tied to 78 million unique national identification numbers. Isa Pantami, Minister of Communications and the Digital Economy, said that since the Government began cleaning its database, no person or official with legal authority to request biodata and other information regarding NIN-SIM for the rescue operation has applied to the Ministry for this information.^[1]

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