Operators in the telecommunication sector are facing an uncertain future – at least for the first quarter of 2021 – as the National Identity Management Commission insists that it would not be extending the deadline on the registration of all Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs) with valid National Identity Numbers (NIN).
According to a report, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) said it has provided about 45 million NINs and has registered about 2 million people in the last 1 month. But two million people only bring the number of Nigerians with NIN to about 45 million. The country has over 98 million unique mobile subscribers. In essence, over 53 million Nigerians may lose their ability to make calls after the deadline elapses on Tuesday.
The deadline set for Tuesday, 19 January has many Nigerians on edge as they scramble to complete the NIN registration before the day ends. Many Nigerians took to Twitter to display pictures of long queues and people spending long hours at different NIMC registration locations trying to get registered on Tuesday. This is as experts say getting all 53 million Nigerians registered on the timeline is near impossible.
“A government that couldn’t organically get all its own federal and state civil servants (and their families) to register with NIMC really hoped to use threats to register all 180 million of us and succeed?” Ayo Sogunro, lawyer and human rights advocate tweeted on Tuesday. “There is a serious lack of critical and creative thinking in this Buhari’s regime.”
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According to Sogunro, the government had all the time to conduct the process organically which requires people getting new passports or new bank accounts to register with NIMC, then request all civil servants and all tertiary school staff and students until the majority of the population is covered.
“Instead, they ended up creating an unnecessary bottleneck and overwhelming their own staff capacity by setting a universal deadline and trying to force everyone to go at the same time. And now, only a few people have (registered),” he said.
In November 2020, the telecommunication sector saw a drop in voice subscribers for the first time since April 2019.
The total number of subscribers dropped by 46,648 to settle at 207.531 million subscribers in November from 207.578 it recorded in October.
Although the 46,648 subscriber drop may seem small compared to the 302,448 subscribers the market lost in April 2019, the telecommunication sector had been projected by many experts as one of the few sectors that will survive the difficult times brought to bear by the ravaging COVID-pandemic without a scratch.
But the loss in November for many experts is a clear indication of the extent of impact the regulatory pressures have had on the operators. It is unlikely to get better when the fourth quarter telcos subscriber figures are published.
