NIN registration: Telcos see biggest subscriber loss since 2017

The decision by the Federal Government to limit the services of telecoms’ operators in order to achieve the National Identification Number (NIN) registration exercise has left the industry counting over three million subscriber losses in December alone.

This loss is the largest since July 2017 when the sector lost nearly four million subscribers, mostly from MTN and 9Mobile networks. At the time, the government had also ordered a SIM registration scrub or sanitisation exercise that left many subscribers disconnected.

However, more Nigerians are beginning to adopt online platforms such as Skype, which does not require the use of SIM card, to connect with their loved ones.

The latest loss in subscribers, according to Olusola Teniola, Nigeria’s national coordinator, Alliance for Affordable Internet, and former president of Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), will cost the operators about N1.8 billion per month in revenue.

The latest data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) show that for the second month running 3,302,911 voice subscribers dropped to put the total subscriber base at 204,228,678 in December from 207,531,589 it recorded in November. The November figure was also a decline from October, where it recorded 207,578,237.

Airtel led the losers table, dropping over 1.5 million subscribers to reach 55,642,209 from 57,231,523 it recorded in November. It is the first company losing subscribers in eight months, since April 2020.

MTN followed closely with nearly 1.3 million subscribers exiting its platform. The telco’s total subscribers’ number stood at 80,764,128 in December from 82,022,621 in November and 83,331,682 in October.

MTN’s market share dropped for the fourth consecutive month to 39.55 percent from 40.14 percent in October, 40.34 percent in September, and 40.90 percent in August.

Broadband penetration also declined for the second consecutive month, dropping to 45.02 percent in December from 45.07 percent in November and 45.93 percent in October.

Experts say the NIN directives, which to a large extent were improperly coordinated, have been mostly responsible for the losses.

The directive left stranded many Nigerians who would have wanted to carry out different activities with their SIMs, Teniola says, noting that in some cases, customers who lost or damaged their SIMs and wanted to retrieve them were unable to do so because of the order to suspend SIM registration. Even when the order was lifted in January 2021, the operators were still uncertain whether to resume registration or wait for formal notification from the NCC.

“We have predicted that the SIM registration exercise would have an impact on the industry at the time, we just did not know to what extent this impact would be,” according to Teniola in an interview with BusinessDay.

Since November, the Nigerian government has been urging its citizens to register for a National Identification Number (NIN) with the objective of creating a national database for everyone living within the country.

According to the Federal Government, the penalty for failing to obtain a NIN will not only be the blocking of SIM cards but would include inability to open individual and/or personal bank accounts, apply for a passport, register a business entity at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and would not be eligible to apply for drivers’ licence.

To achieve the mandate, Isa Ali Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, directed telcos on December 10, 2020, to suspend SIM registration and retrieval exercises pending when the NIN exercise was completed. Later on December 16, the deadline for linking NIN with SIM was fixed for two weeks – ending December 30, while NIN registration was to end February 9.

The two deadlines caused a public uproar. Aside from doubts that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) had the capacity to achieve a seamless and stress-free registration process, there were fears that the crowd that would throng the centres face the risk of exposing themselves to COVID-19.

The ministry was forced to add another three weeks to the deadline for subscribers with NIN who are yet to link it to mobile lines, and six weeks extension for subscribers without NIN from December 30, 2020, to February 9, 2021.

But as the deadlines approached it became obvious that NIMC on its part could not handle the exercise and would need the help of telcos. Hence, in the last week of January, the commission announced that it had licenced telcos to generate identity numbers and that subscribers could now do their registration at the various outlets owned by the network operators, and new deadline for completing registration moved to April.

Although the inclusion of telcos was the most sensible approach to meeting the national identity target, experts say the unnecessarily lengthy period it took for that decision to be made was negative for the entire telecom industry.

Gbenga Sesan, executive director, Paradigm Initiative, told BusinessDay that the impact had started in September 2019, when the ministry asked the telcos to delist the identity of improperly registered SIMs. Following the directive, the NCC had claimed that it reduced the number of the affected SIMs from 9.2 million to 2.2 million. In March 2020, the NCC said it had switched off 2.2 million remaining SIMs.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which drove the adoption rate for mobile devices upwards, had helped telcos cushion earlier effect of the directive as new subscribers were recorded. But growth has not been as impressive for all the operators. It was not until June that 9Mobile got back on the path of subscriber growth. MTN on the other hand began to lose market share from August, and continued to December. 9Mobile and Globacom both lost subscribers in December.

The huge losses recorded by MTN are primarily due to its position as the largest operator in the market and in Africa, Sesan said. Given that it has the most subscribers; it is almost given that it would bleed the most in any negative regulatory push.

But beyond negative regulatory impact, Teniola also suggested that the market might have also been affected by the proliferation of online meeting platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Classrooms, etc, that ensured that individuals, groups, companies, and families did not have to make personal calls through networks to stay in touch with the office, business transactions, and school programmes to mention a few. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many people and businesses to use online tools to keep interactions as seamless as can be.