Regulation

Nigerian regulator says it wants to eliminate pre-registered SIM cards

Nigerian regulator says it wants to eliminate pre-registered SIM cards

Efforts to curb alleged misuse of pre-registered SIM cards in Nigeria are continuing. Telecommunications regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced new measures aimed at eliminating the sale and use of these cards, according to local reports.

Many news outlets quote NCC Executive Director Aminu Maida, who suggests that pre-registered SIM cards pose a major threat to national cybersecurity as they facilitate criminal activities such as fraud, identity theft and money laundering.

The commission therefore plans to intensify field inspections, penalise complicit operators, and strengthen coordination with security forces and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). It is claimed that this will provide a transparent and accountable framework for compliance monitoring, investigations and sanctions.

As regular readers will be aware, Nigeria has already undertaken several campaigns to clean up the sector, including the requirement to link SIM cards to National Identification Numbers (NINs). However, with an estimated 220 million (or more) mobile subscribers – not too far off the 232.7 million population suggested by the World Bank in 2024 – it hasn’t been easy, as our reports have indicated.

Indeed, some informal resellers have apparently found ways to offer pre-activated SIM cards. Call masking (a technology that uses temporary virtual numbers to hide the real phone numbers of callers), and refiling (a type of interconnect bypass fraud) are other problems that the NCC hopes the new rules will help it tackle.



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