Nigeria’s mobile subscriber base declined by 30.09 percent to 153.32 million in September 2024, following the completion of the Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs) and National Identification Number (NIN) linkage exercise and an audit of each network operator’s actual active subscribers.
According to official figures seen by BusinessDay, active lines fell by 65.98 million to 153.32 million on September 14, 2024, from 219.30 million in March 2024.
The decline was due to the removal of SIMs not linked to a verified NIN and the Nigerian Communications Commission’s (NCC) audit, which revealed that one telecom operator had inflated its active subscriber base by 40 million.
“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,” documents seen by BusinessDay revealed.
An insider identified the telco as having “around sixty-something million subscribers.” As of March 2024, the last official figures from NCC indicated that MTN had 81.79 million active subscribers; Airtel, 63.36 million; Glo, 62.19 million; and 9mobile, 11.66 million.
Read also: NIMC affirms seamless NIN-SIM linkage services
Currently, no SIM card in Nigeria is operating without a verified NIN. Earlier in August, BusinessDay had reported that an estimated 66.01 million lines were at risk of disconnection if not linked before a September 14, 2024, deadline.
This was after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reported that 153 million lines had been linked to NINs.
“To date, over 153 million SIMs have been successfully linked to NINs, reflecting an impressive compliance rate of 96 percent, a substantial increase from 69.7 percent in January 2024,” the regulator said in August.
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.
However, many of these lines would be reintegrated into the active subscriber base following their respective owners’ submission of NIN details. “We won’t know the full extent of subscriber churn until a whole year after the September deadline,” a source said. This is because owners can still retrieve a line within one year of inactivity.
The SIM-NIN initiative was initially launched to help security agencies track criminals. To reinforce this, users must now be at least 18 years old to register a SIM because it is a legal contract with network operators. The NCC recently reported that the exercise had uncovered cases where some individuals held over 100,000 SIM cards.
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