NCC: NIN to become a compulsory requirement for SIM registration, retrieval

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says the national identification number will be a compulsory requirement for sim registration.

In a statement released by the industry regulator, it said the SIM registration exercise will help with the adoption of technology to improve security in the country.

“In line with the federal government’s directive, the commission is collaborating with the National Identity Management Commission towards the implementation of the mandatory use of national identification number regulations which stipulates the mandatory use of NIN for transactions such as SIM registration, reactivation/retrieval,” it said.

The NCC explained that it was working on a credible database for telephone subscribers to allow the tracking of telephone use in criminal activities and other identity management needs.

Thus, the commission said it de-duplicated 24 million validly registered telecom subscribers from the records using the automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS).

“During the period under review, over 24 million validly registered subscriber records were scrubbed/ cleaned-up (deduplicated) via automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) in fulfilment of the mandate to establish a credible database of telephone subscribers,” it explained.

“The database was also upgraded with additional features such as ‘Add SIM’ and ‘Update SIM’ functionalities as well as the national identity number (NIN) field for an improved SIM registration process and ease of harmonization of SIM registration subscriber data with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) when the NIN regulations come into force

Data provided by the commission also showed that 22.3 million subscribers joined the do-not-disturb list.

The channel was created to control the rate at which subscribers get unsolicited messages.