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SIM Cards, NINs and Fixing Insecurity in Nigeria

SIM Cards, NINs and Fixing Insecurity in Nigeria

Reading this piece, if losing N70 billion will fix insecurity in Nigeria, the government should go ahead and link the SIM cards to the national identity numbers (NINs): “The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) said the average revenue per user in Nigeria’s telecom market is N1,420. Using this figure, the loss is expected to hit over N70 billion.”

On Monday, the Federal Government of Nigeria ordered telecom SIM lines not linked to the National Identification Number (NIN) barred from making outgoing calls. The decision has come on the heels of deadly terror attack in Kaduna, which resulted in the death of at least 10 people and multiple injuries.

In 2020, the Federal Government initiated the NIN-SIM linkage to curtail the use of mobile phones in execution of crimes by criminals. The idea is to have every telecom line linked to the national identity database, making it easy for security operatives to identify individuals linked to any phone number involved with crime.

Nigerians were mandated to register and link their phone numbers to their NIN to avoid being disconnected from telecom services. It has been about two years and 125 million SIMs linked since the NIN-SIM linkage initiative, which has impacted a huge loss on the telecom industry, kicked off, yet the security situation in Nigeria has deteriorated.

However, I personally do not believe that will do the magic. Using SIM – NIN linkage as an excuse is not fair to the victims of insecurity  of Nigeria. Of course, I agree that we need to link these SIM cards to the NINs. But it is key to note that without doing the right thing, the outcome will not change.

We know the right thing but we like to deceive ourselves in that nation!

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My response on the “right thing”: I made my point specifically on the nexus of security. The fact is this: we know where these guys are camped. You do not need a SIM to know that. Bringing SIM creates an illusion that these are aliens which must be tracked.

NIN-SIM Linkage: Nigerian Government, Telcos Set to Lose Billions in Revenue


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1 THOUGHT ON SIM Cards, NINs and Fixing Insecurity in Nigeria

  1. There are issues, but linking SIM to NIN is just one of the measures. To reduce ransom payment for kidnapping, how about limiting monthly cash withdrawal to N1 million? That way, no kidnapper can ask for N20 million in cash, because there will be no way to raise cash of N20 million. There are number of common sense measures that can be taken to minimize insecurity, and not all of them need to be palatable. By limiting cash withdrawals and cash based transactions, we will simultaneously ramp up digital payments, but we are too dull to profit from crisis.

    Banks blocked accounts without BVN, so anyone who cares about making calls know what to do, in the meantime they are still able to make Whatsapp calls…

    So many things need to be happening concurrently, when you see a problem as an existential threat, you don’t need to spend more time giving sermons, just get on with the real work, at some point people will still thank you for the ‘unkind’ measures you took to restore order.

    Who has ever transformed a nation by being too nice? Block the noise and produce results, enough of the yammering and bloviating.

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