CITIZENS COMPASS —After outrage by many users of Subscriber Identity/Identification Module (SIM) that their cards are being barred, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has explained the rationale behind this.

NCC attributed this to duplication of SIMs saying that some external agents are responsible for this. 

The commission through its Director of Compliance, Mr Efosa Idehen, revealed this at a recent media briefing in Lagos.

He said,

On the issue of already registered SIMs and NIN, the issue is that some of those SIMs were registered with duplicated NINs.

“When an audit of the system is carried out, actual owners of the NINs reclaim them. We have a lot of things that people do within the industry, especially SIM-NIN linkage for money purposes. Yes, people register their SIMs and try to link their NINs but the agents doing those registrations do a lot of damage. 

“We are seeing this and want to correct it. We want a situation where when people say they are the owners of their SIMs, there is no doubt.”

In the past frw months, many subscribers of Glo, MTN, Airtel, Etisalat and others have been complaining that their SIMs have been barred from various networks.