President of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, who made this known, said these lines are mainly in car trackers, MiFi units, WiFi devices, and Point of Sale (PoS) machines. He said this during a recent interview with News Central on the back of recent chaos caused by the unblocking of lines not connected to their NINs.
“The numbers are staggering,” Adebayo, the president of the umbrella body of telcos, said. “We are looking at potentially over 30 million SIM cards, including those in various digital devices, that have not been properly linked to the NIN. Many of these SIMS are in car trackers, POS machines, MiFis, WiFis, and many other devices that use SIMs to operate.”
Over the weekend, telcos began barring phone lines not linked with NINs days before the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s July 31, 2024 deadline. Since February 2024, telcos have implemented a phased disconnection of lines in compliance with an NCC directive. At the end of 2023, the regulator asked telcos to disconnect lines that had not been successfully linked with an NIN across three phases, ending July 31, 2024.
