…As telcos bar 119m unlinked SIMs
By Our Correspondent
The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC has said that it has over 15,000 national identification number, NIN enrolment centres in the country.
NIMC disclosed this in a statement following the federal government directive to all the telecommunication companies to restrict unlinked subscriber identity module card, SIMs from making calls.
Unlinked lines are SIM cards that are not yet linked with NIN and about 119 million lines run the risk of being deactivated.
Available statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC in February showed that there are 303,636,267 connected GSM mobile lines in the country out of which 197,768,482 were active.
Meanwhile, of 197.7 million active subscribers, 78 million had so far been linked. A simple mathematics will show that about 119 subscribers are yet to link.
The federal government had on Monday directed all Telcos to restrict unlinked SIMs from making calls as the deadline for NIN-SIM linkage ended on March 31 after postponing it many times.
As a reminder, the Federal government on Thursday directed Nigerians to ensure they completed the verification and linkage of their NINs to their SIMs within days.
Meanwhile, a lot of Nigerians who are yet to comply with the directive and had been barred from making calls are lamenting.
A youth corps member, Elizabeth Ushie said, she has not been able to make calls with her Airtel line since Monday night.
She said: “I will go and link the line before the end of the week because some people know me with that line. However, it’s not my major line.
Another subscriber who identified herself as Esther said: “I have not been able to make calls with my Airtel since morning.”
Others have also taken to their social media to express their displeasure over the barring of their communication lines by telecommunication network providers in Nigeria.
One is Chidozie Uchenna, says on twitter, “Please my SIM has been blocked and I can’t make calls for now.
Another Twitter user and MTN subscriber, @Nnkeyanna, questioned the loyalty of telcos to their subscribers as they quickly complied with the government’s directive without even a dint of hesitation.
The user said: “All these operators are always slow in everything until it’s time to start blocking lines because of Nin-Sim linkage. They could not even exercise patients with their client.
Okay, I will see who will suffer because when you block people’s line, they will not need to buy your airtime. So who is losing out at the end because I can still receive calls from people?”
However, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, ALTON had promised total compliance to the federal government’s directive.
This was according to a statement released by the association recently and signed by the Chairman and Head of Operations, Engr Gbenga Adebayo and Mr. Gbolahan Awonuga respectively.
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