The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced that SIM cards not linked to National Identity Numbers (NIN) will be deactivated by the end of February.
The compulsory linkage between SIM cards and NINs was initiated in December 2020 to improve security by preventing unregistered and unlinked phone numbers for criminal activities.
Despite deadline extensions, there has been a significant number of phone lines that remain unlinked.
The NCC Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, Aminu Maida, emphasized that pre-registered or illegally registered SIM cards have been challenging, and the SIM-NIN connection was intended to address this issue.
Maida made the comment on Tuesday in an interactive session with journalists, noting that the commission will now adopt a data-driven decision-making approach and hold telecom service providers accountable for service delivery to consumers.
“You are going to see a change in the way we make decisions; we are going to be very data-driven. All our decisions are going to be backed up by data as much as possible. We want to reduce subjectiveness and make the right decisions that will improve the industry.
