SIM Registration: Reps To Probe Telecommunication Providers And Regulator

The House of Representatives in Nigeria has begun a process of investigating the extent of telecommunication companies compliance to a directive to deactivate all pre-registered Subscribers Identification Module (SIM) cards and the role of the regulator in ensuring compliance.

After Honourable Oluwole Oke moved a motion, under a matter of urgent public importance, during Wednesday’s plenary, the House unanimously passed the motion and mandated its Committee on Telecommunications to investigate alleged non-compliance to the directive to deactivate unregistered SIM cards on their networks.

The committee is also to check the role of the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), in allowing the network providers get away with the directive.

The committee is expected to report back to the House in three weeks.

On August 5, the NCC issued a seven-day ultimatum to telecommunication operators to deactivate all improper and pre-registered SIM cards or face sanctions.

Before the ultimatum was issued, the NCC said more than 120 million SIM cards had been registered and transmitted to the central database by the operators.

The regulatory agency said validation exercise revealed multitude of unreliable data in terms of incomplete, inaccurate demographic and biometric data.

Pre-registered SIM cards include those that did not capture facial pictures or fingerprints.