Two telecommunications providers have claimed that despite providing their National Identification Numbers for verification, 9.7 million of their users are still prevented from making outgoing calls.
In their most recent financial report, MTN and Airtel stated that 16.2 million users who had their lines banned had submitted their NINs for verification, but only 6.5 million had been confirmed as of September 30, 2022.
Following a Federal Government decree about users who had not connected their SIMs and NINs, over 72.77 million GSM lines were prevented from making calls on their SIMs in April.
It said that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (Retd. ), “had authorized the policy’s implementation with effect from April 4, 2022.” As a result, the Federal Government has instructed all telcos to strictly enforce the policy on all SIMs issued (existing and new) in Nigeria.
“Outgoing calls will subsequently be barred for telephone lines that have not complied with the NIN-SIM linkage policy from April 4, 2022.”
According to MTN and Airtel 19 million and 13.6 million subscribers respectively were affected by the ban. The telcos further stated that the implementation of the policy has affected their revenue.
Airtel said, “In April 2022, the voice services for 13.6 million customers were barred due to non-submission of NIN information.
“As of September 2022, 5.7 million customers (42 per cent) have subsequently submitted their NINs and 2.7 million customers (20 per cent) have been fully verified and unbarred. Revenue growth for the first half of the year was impacted by the effect of barring outgoing voice calls in Nigeria for those customers who had not submitted their NINs.
