NCC directs telcos to bar sims without NIN

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has directed telecommunications operators in Nigeria to implement full network barring on all phone lines for which the subscribers have not submitted their national identification numbers (NINs) by February 28, 2024.

In addition, those who had submitted their NINs but have not been verified are also to be fully barred on or before 29 March 2024, where five or more lines are linked to an unverified NIN.

Similarly, where less than five lines are linked to an unverified NIN, such lines are to be barred on or before 15 April 2024.

According to the directive, all affected subscribers must be verified (biometrics and biodata) before their lines are unbarred.

This latest directive came as a follow-up to the NCC’s directive on 4 April 2022 requiring operators to restrict outgoing calls (one-way barring) for subscribers whose lines are not linked with NINs.

The Federal Government commenced implementing the SIM/NIN harmonization program in December 2020 through the NCC. This program requires all telecommunications subscribers to link their NINs to SIM registration records to avoid service restrictions.

Also Read: NCC restates commitment to transparency

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.

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.

From December 2020 when the mandatory NIN-SIM Linkage exercise was first announced, telecom operators had lost over 20 million subscriptions as some subscribers abandoned their lines. However, the operators started recovering the loss as more Nigerians registered for NIN, bringing active subscriptions across the 4 mobile networks to over 200 million as of August.

However, with the new directive, the operators may see a further decline in their database starting from February as millions of lines currently restricted are fully barred.