When a person loses his mobile phone, the first and natural thing to do is block the line at a nearby service centre to prevent access to vital information like bank details. However, the reverse has become the case for some Nigerians in recent time.
Nonye was on her way home Thursday evening around Yaba, in Lagos, when she was attacked by four men, one wielding a cutlass. They collected her phone, wallet, ATM cards, and even yanked off her necklace, leaving her with bruises.
The next day, she succeeded in blocking her ATM cards, but only after her bank balances have been emptied. Then she went to her network provider to retrieve her SIM card and was told the Federal Government has banned SIM retrieval due to the National Identity Number (NIN) registration.
“My mental state is a huge mess right now,” she writes on Twitter. “I have cried from frustration, anger, and pain. I don’t know what to do. I feel so helpless.”
Varis Fredrick, a 21-year-old student and cryptocurrency trader, did exactly that when his phone was stolen.
He was then referred to the office of his network provider in Asaba where he was asked to provide an affidavit, ID card, and some other requirements to enable him to retrieve his line.
But after providing the documents, he was told the line could not be retrieved because of the Federal Government’s directive which bars the activation of new Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards.
Nonye’s experience is only one among hundreds of Nigerians whose lives have been upended by the decision by Isa Pantami, minister of technology and digital economy, compelling Nigerians under the pain of losing their phone numbers, to register their SIM cards in a matter of weeks, when previous efforts have failed since 2007.
In December 2019, the Federal Government ordered the suspension of the sale and registration of new SIM cards by network operators and followed it with an instruction to telecom operators to block subscribers who do not have the government NIN the next week.
Available data indicate that it is possible over 100 million of Nigerians may not have a NIN, that millions have incomplete registration, that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) only has a capacity to register only 500,000 people monthly as it was ill-equipped, understaffed, and poorly motivated, and that several small businesses will be impacted by the ludicrous directive from the minister, yet the government proceeded with a determination that bordered on mania.
Nigerians warned the minister and the sector regulator – the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) led by Umar Garba Danbatta, that this regulation was poorly conceived considering that the country was dealing with a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and NIMC was unprepared for a massive registration at this time, but this was ignored.
Government officials who routinely treat Nigerians with the disdain reserved for a conquered people ignored wise counsel and embarked upon a fruitless registration exercise that is now being blamed for the rising wave of coronavirus in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital with most GSM penetration.
To worsen matters, the NIMC unit of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) directed members on Thursday to embark on strike over poor welfare package, lack of tools, and risk of exposure to coronavirus.
“The meeting was convened to discuss the state of the exposure of staff members to Covid-19, and the salary structure and its representation in the annual appropriation, and the irregularities in the conduct of promotions, and the personal protection and safety in light of the Covid-19 pandemic,” noted a communiqué by ASCSN.
Like many Nigerians, Fredrick has been unable to retrieve his line since it was stolen by gunmen in November 2020.
Read Also: NIN registration to resume Monday as NIMC workers end strike
“This number is linked to everything that I am. My emails, bank, BVN, school system, and other major stuff. Most especially my Bitcoin wallet, I can’t access my wallet on a new phone unless I input a code sent to that particular number. And then there is no access to the number,” he told BusinessDay.
He explained that as a crypto trader, his daily earnings are dependent on the network of fellow crypto traders he has built over the years, and now he cannot even access those people.
“It’s really frustrating,” he said.
Another aggrieved Nigerian who simply wants to be identified as Success said his father had his phone stolen and he could not retrieve his SIM cards.
The father, Success said, is a businessman whose clients can only reach him through phone calls, adding that his inability to retrieve his line had prevented him from getting jobs.
In effect, the minister and NCC are endangering the lives of Nigerians in a fruitless bid to register SIM cards when NIMC is clearly unprepared to carry out the task. Yet, in a clear draconian and unreasonable way regulations are drawn up by government officials, the purchase of new SIM cards and retrieval of lost ones have been banned.
“We gave this nation to people with the lowest IQ to run,” said a Twitter user, Dire Adesanya, “Pantami just said go and register, he thought our numbers are the comparison of his village population. They don’t have data and even when little data is available their IQ is too abysmal to process the duty of their offices.”
However, the educational accomplishment of the men running the ministry and the NCC seemed to belie this assertion as both Pantami and Danbatta are PhD holders with years of experience in the telecoms sector. Yet, how they could not see that their plan was illogical and dangerous during a pandemic raises questions about their fitness for office, according to concerned Nigerians.
At various registration centres, thousands of Nigerians mill around the offices of NIMC waiting to register their numbers but without being attended to. Thousands of others have been exploited by fraudulent NIMC officials who tell them to bring cash before they could be registered.
There are barely 1,000 registration offices to handle the registration of over 100 million Nigerians yet to be enrolled on the government database. A few weeks ago, NIMC was fending off media reports that its database has been hacked with the data of Nigerians auctioned on the dark web.
NIMC officials at registration centres besieged by harried Nigerians are concerned about exposure to Covid-19 as their taskmasters are cooped in their offices unmoored by the threat of a deadly pandemic to their minions. The protective gear issued last week after complaints were donations by the World Bank, an indication of just how unprepared the agency is.
Analysts are urging Pantami and the NCC to transfer the registration of SIM cards to telecom companies who are better equipped and motivated to do it. This was the strategy adopted by the central bank when it mandated customers to enrol for a Bank Verification Number. With a vast network of infrastructure, telecom operators have better systems and trained personnel and database used to register customers during the initial SIM registration exercise.
According to the government, the objective of the audit exercise was to verify and ensure compliance by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) with the set quality standards and requirements of SIM Card Registration as issued by the ministry and the Commission.
The decision already has MNOs sitting on edge as their fourth quarter is likely to show they lost revenue as well as subscriber growth. A day after the suspension was announced, the share price of MTN and Airtel declined as investors got scared.
But individuals are the most affected.
To retrieve a lost line means that a new SIM card will be issued. But with the ban in place, the implication is that those who lost their lines may not be able to retrieve it until after the audit is completed and new instructions are announced.
Invariably, the gains service providers get from the activation of new SIM cards will be negatively impacted and eroded.
Eyitope (surname withheld) was livid when he went to the Glo office at Challenge, in Ibadan, with his SIM pack to retrieve his line and was told that SIM retrieval had been suspended by the customer care agent who showed zero empathy.
He said his phone was stolen at a resort in Lekki when he travelled to Lagos in December. The line, he explained, was his primary business line; hence he expected some empathy from the representative of the service provider who he said went to have breakfast immediately after his SIM retrieval was denied.
Eyitope said he learnt later that with or without NIN the retrieval of SIMs had been suspended.
“That line is the only line I have been using for business for the past 12 years. My Whatapp is attached to it and so many clients would have been reaching me without success.
“It is also the primary means of getting new clients as Whatsapp is a direct source of new business for me,” he said.
He added that the number is the phone contact information on his social media handles and website, and that he is sure of already missing lots of business deals.
A student, who identified himself as Adeyinka, said he had been unable to reach anyone since his SIM card was damaged in late November. After tendering the documents required, a week later, he was told by a representative of MTN that they were given directives not to do SIM retrieval, welcome back, SIM registration, and upgrade.
“I couldn’t reach some people (and) do some other things. They said notification will be put out when the Federal Government gives them directives to do so,” he said.
Beyond the delay in lifting the suspension, Nigerians still have to bribe NIMC officials to expedite the registration process. This is aside from paying the required service charge of N500.
A source who chose to be anonymous told BusinessDay he had visited the Remita website and paid the required N500, printed his receipt and taken all the relevant docs to the office at a NIN centre in Sango, Ibadan.
On getting there, he was told that the fee to be paid was N1,500.
“The official I was talking to just walked away, telling me that the N1,500 was the amount approved and mandated to them by their superiors.
“He later asked a more superior officer to talk to me and verify his report. The older man spoke very politely, after reviewing the Remita receipt I had, and told me I needed to pay N1,000 balance since I had paid N500 online,” the source said.
Despite retrieving his NIN, he still could not retrieve his line as he was told they had not received any directive from their head office on SIM retrieval.
Funmi Opesanwo, regional coordinator of NIMC, in Alausa area of Lagos State, while addressing press men recently said there are different services that the commission offers. NIN enrolment, she said, is free but there are fees attached to card renewal, correction of date of birth, and change of address.
NIN holders are required to pay N15,000 to correct their dates of birth in the commission’s database. They are also required to pay a processing fee of N5,000 for card renewal or card replacement as well as an address modification fee of N500.
Apart from telcos, the suspension also affects other industries, especially e-commerce where many consumers shop using their mobile lines. E-commerce has grown over the years due to increased mobile data usage and network coverage estimated at 93 percent on the basis of a population size of 198 million. Many young people are active vendors on e-commerce platforms like Jumia, paying and receiving money through transfers.
According to Statista, in Nigeria, 27 percent of e-commerce payments occurred by card, and 24 percent by bank transfer.
Gbenga Sesan, Paradigm Initiative’s executive director, told BusinessDay that it is possible the government did not consider the deeper implications of the suspension much less the privacy issues that it will generate, before giving the directive.
He recommends that a legal environment needs to be completed by NIMC through submitting a draft Data Privacy and Protection Bill to the National Assembly for possible accelerated passage.
“This should be followed by independent but coordinated action by the various agencies, with the Minister getting out of the way of planning and action,” Sesan said.
Segun Awosanya, founder of Social Intervention Advocacy Foundation (SIAF) said lives are being ruined daily and the government is worsening things.
“These are people the government failed to protect in the first place being victimised a third time after their accounts must have been emptied by robbers,” he said. “Allow the networks to attend to these special cases and ensure the linkage of NIN while at it. The entire exercise itself is an after-thought and harmonization of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics could have prevented this mad rush and general inconvenience.”
