New industry statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) have revealed that telecommunication operators lost 64.37 million active mobile subscriptions between March and September 2024.
While this loss has been tied to the completion of the Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs) and National Identification Number (NIN) linkage exercise, new details have revealed that an NCC audit of the industry was responsible for a large portion of this decline.
According to the NCC, Nigeria’s active mobile subscription base fell by 64.37 million to 154.63 million in September 2024 from 219.01 million in March. A breakdown of the numbers revealed that MTN’s subscriber base declined by 4.53 percent to 78.09 million in the period, Airtel fell by 15.17 percent to 53.75 million, Glo fell by 69.20 percent to 19.15 million, and 9mobile fell by 68.82 percent to 11.66 million.
Earlier, an NCC document seen by BusinessDay revealed that this fall was due to the SIM-NIN exercise and discrepancies in data submitted by a Mobile Network Operator.
“One Mobile Network Operator was found to have incorrectly reported around 40 million subscribers as active, despite the absence of any revenue-generating activity over a 90-day period. This was in direct violation of the Commission’s guidelines for determining active subscribers and led to an inflated report of the operator’s subscriber base, thereby skewing industry statistics,” the document read.
An insider had identified the telco as having “around sixty-something million subscribers.” According to sources close to the matter, the telco reported inactive lines as active, inflating the industry’s statistics.
“After several reconciliations and audits, we found numbers not used for any revenue-generating activity in the last 90 days. This led to a drop of over 40 million subscribers and impacted the industry’s figures.”
While 9mobile experienced a steep decline in its subscriber base, NCC’s data revealed that most subscribers ported to MTN. Porting activity from 9mobile, which was recently acquired and has been experiencing network outages, increased by 434.66 percent to 7,127 in September from 1,333 in March.
This drop in the country’s mobile subscriber base has also led to a 19.21 percent drop in mobile internet subscriptions,
Although the total number of lines lost to the completion of the SIM-NIN exercise won’t be known until September 2025, with one NCC official saying, “We won’t know the full extent of subscriber churn until a whole year after the September deadline,” it also contributed to subscriber churn in September.
The SIM-NIN linkage initiative began in 2020, and by April 2022, 125 million lines had been linked. The NCC has set multiple deadlines since then, with the most recent series of final deadlines announced in December 2023.
“All SIMs for which the subscribers have not submitted their NINs are to be barred on or before 28 February 2024. Where five or more SIMs are linked to an unverified NIN, they are to be barred on or before 29 March 2024. Where less than five SIMs are linked to an unverified NIN, they are to be barred on or before 15 April 2024,” it noted.
A full breakdown of the number of lines affected by the respective deadlines of the SIM-NIN linkage seen by BusinessDay revealed that 50 million lines were barred in February 2024, an additional 40 million in March, and 24.8 million by the final deadline in September.
Many of these lines are expected to be reintegrated into the active subscriber base after their respective owners submit NIN details.
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