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About 65 million phone lines are at risk of disconnection after telecom operators refused to grant subscribers an extension to the National Identification Number -Subscriber Identity Module linkage deadline.
The final deadline expired on September 14, 2024, and the Nigeria Communications Commission, the telecom regulator, expected that no SIM card would remain active without a verified NIN from September 15.
Analysis suggests that approximately 65 million lines remain at risk, as an estimated one million lines could not have been linked between the NCC’s deadline announcement and the actual cut-off date.
The telecom regulator’s data from March 2024 shows there were 219 million active lines across major networks such as MTN, Glo, Airtel, and 9mobile, with 153 million linked to NINs.
This means that about 66 million lines were unlinked to NIN after the NCC’s deadline announcement.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, Gbenga Adebayo, discarded the idea of a deadline extension and said that the disconnection process is already ongoing.
“It’s difficult to provide exact numbers for the lines disconnected so far, but it’s certainly less than 66 million because, even on the day of the deadline, people were still linking their SIMs,” Adebayo said.
He affirmed that mobile operators were adhering to the NCC’s directives, describing the deadline as “acceptable and reasonable.”
Adebayo urged subscribers to comply, stating, “We can’t keep extending deadlines and going back and forth on this issue. This is a national concern, and these data are critical for national development.”
However, the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers urged the NCC to extend the deadline.
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