Telecoms to deactivate SIMs not linked to NIN in February

Telecoms to deactivate SIMs not linked to NIN in February

Telecommunication Operators in Nigeria have announced February 28, 2024 as the deadline for the disconnection of all Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs) not connected to the National Identity Number.

Gbenga Adebayo, Chairman Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), confirmed the development on Tuesday.

According to him, the directive to deactivate SIMs not linked to NIN was given by the Nigerian Communications Commission.

“The implication is that those who do not have their SIMs linked to the National Identity Number or whose lines have been linked but are yet to be verified need to do so, otherwise they will be disconnected.

“You know that it is a government directive; it is not our decision; if you read the press statement, the Nigerian Communication Commission directed that we should withdraw the services.

“We have to abide by the directive, but we are concerned because of the number of active subscribers on the networks; we can only ask people to abide by it because it is a government directive”, he said.

The development came after the federal government issued several NIN-SIM linkage deadlines.

In December 2020, the Federal Government introduced the SIM-NIN Linkage policy to curtail insecurity and ensure sanity in the telecoms sector.

There are a total of 220,715,961 million telecom subscribers in Nigeria as at August 2023.