The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has blamed duplicated National Identity Numbers (NINs) for the recent complaints by subscribers whose SIMs were barred despite linking them to their NINs.
The NCC Director of Compliance, Mr Efosa Idehen, said the situation was due to the activities of third-party agents who duplicated NINs for unsuspecting telecom subscribers.
The director said this during a media briefing in Lagos.
“On the issue of already registered SIMs and NINs, the issue is that some of those SIMs were registered with duplicate NINs.
“When an audit of the system is carried out, the 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.”
This follows recent complaints from certain users that their lines had been banned by telcos despite having linked their NINs to their SIM cards.
The director said the commission was committed to ensuring that SIMs could be tracked back to their owners.
