The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued a seven-day ultimatum to Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) and other network providers to deactivate all pre-registered Subscribers Identification Module (SIM) cards or face sanctions.
The telecoms regulatory body gave the ultimatum after a high-level security meeting between the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Department of State Service (DSS), the network operators and the NCC in Abuja.
At the meeting were the representatives of the NSA, Group Captain, Ibikunle Daramola; DSS, Mr Godwin Ometu; the immediate past NCC executive vice chairman, Dr Eugene Juwah; executive commissioner, technical services, Engr. Ubale Maska and representatives of MTN, Globacom, Etisalat, Visafone, Airtel and others.
A statement by the commission’s director of public affairs, Mr Tony Ojobo, said the directive was sequel to seemingly intractable security situation in the country and crimes committed against members of the public either by kidnappers, terrorists, robbers and threats to lives, through the use of such unregistered SIM cards across all the networks.
The statement read in part: “The meeting resolved that henceforth, all registrations must conform to the data dictionary, technical specifications on finger prints and facial images and the business rule agreed by all stakeholders; all registration records must be validated before sending to the commission; thus eliminating all invalid records that does not conform new registrations and indicate same in the monthly reports sent to commission. It was also resolved that operators will be held liable for cases of pre-registered SIMs.”
The statement noted that while more than 120 million SIM cards have been registered and transmitted to the central database by the operators, about 45 per cent of the total numbers of registered SIMs, as at September 2014, were deemed invalid, adding that less than 30 per cent of the invalid records has been resubmitted for correction till date.