Nigerian govt lifts ban on new SIMs registration

The Federal Government has lifted the ban on the activation of new Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards in the country.

The Technical Assistant (Information Technology) to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Femi Adeluyi, who disclosed this in a statement on Thursday, however, said the government ordered the compulsory activation of the new SIM cards with the National Identity Numbers (NINs).

The directive, according to him, takes effect from April 19.

He said the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, led the development of a revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM card registration in collaboration with all other stakeholders According to him in line with the Nigerian Communications Act 2003, Section 23(a).

Adeluyi said the key aspects of the draft policy were presented to the stakeholders at the 4th review meeting of the Ministerial Task Force on the NIN-SIM registration held in February.

READ ALSO: SIM registration: Telcos lose 357,997 subscribers

He said: “Dr. Pantami also presented the revised policy to President Muhammadu Buhari on March 26, and the final amendments were completed Wednesday with further improvements and endorsed by the President.

“The policy includes guidelines on new SIM acquisition and activation, SIM replacement, new SIM activation for corporate bodies and Internet-of-Things/Machine-to-Machine, amongst others.

For the corporate registration, institutions would be required to appoint a Telecoms Master (at the minimum of an Executive Management level) to provide the operational Primary NIN representation.

“The Telecoms Master would also be responsible for ensuring that the users provide their NINs to serve as a secondary NIN.

“For IoT/M2M activations, SIM security protocols would be implemented on the SIM profile to ensure that SIMs can only be used for point-to-point data services specific to the URL they are working with. All other services will be barred.”

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