April 7, 2022/CSL Research

Earlier this week, the Federal Government, through telecom companies, barred Nigerians who had not linked their SIMs and NINs together from making calls, following the expiration of the deadline for the SIM-NIN verification exercise expired on 31 March. However, telecom subscribers under the aegis of the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATS) asked the Federal Government to extend the NIN-SIM policy deadline by another three months as many of the service centres across the country were packed full for most of the week as disconnected subscribers struggled to do what is needed. There have been complaints about the slow pace of the exercise given the inadequate capacity of theNational Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

We recall that on 15 December 2020, the NCC mandated all mobile subscribers to submit their National Identification Number (NIN) to update their SIM card registration, putting the initial deadline at 30 December 2020. Given the risk of disconnection for most subscribers, as many Nigerians had not enrolled for NIN, the regulator extended the deadline on several occasions from January 2021 to February, June, July, October, December 2021 and finally, March 2022. As of 04 April 2022, over 125 million SIMs had their NINs submitted for linkage by the NCC and also, the NIMC had issued over 78 million unique NINs. Meanwhile, as of December 2021, NIMC had issued c.66 million unique NINs and comparing that to 78 million NINs in April, one can conclude that the pace of registration within the past 3-4 months
(January-April) has been slow, justifying NATS’ request in March 2022 to extend the 31 March deadline.

In our view, the conversation around the NIN-SIM integration may likely continue for most of 2022 and beyond, if precedence is anything to go by. The telephone subscribers registration regulations issued in 2011 took many years to implement. Though the telecom operators have deployed NIN enrolment points across the country to ensure a faster exercise, the responsibility for verifying and generating NIN for subscribers still rests with NIMC, even after being registered and uploaded by the telecom operators on the NIMC portal. The largest telecom operator, MTNN, indicated that 67% (47m) of its subscriber base
had linked their NIN to the network as of 31 March 2022. According to the firm, the 47m subscribers linked equates to 76% of its service revenue, leaving the remaining 14% at the beck and call of the regulator. While the regulator (NCC) has only barred outgoing calls for the affected SIMS, if not reversed, voice revenue of the operators could be negatively impacted. Similarly, for Airtel Nigeria, 73% (31m) of its active subscribers have also been verified as of 02 April 2022.

The increasing incidences of criminal activities in the country such as financial crimes, kidnapping, banditry, armed robberies and terrorism make the SIM-NIN integration exercise more necessary. These criminal activities leverage easy access to the national telecoms network. Mobile technology is increasingly being used in crime-fighting, as mobile phones have call history, contacts, text messages, web browser history, location information, etc that provide critical information for crime fighters. Information contained
in mobile phones can serve as a starting point for criminal investigations and provide subsequent leads.