The Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC) has insisted that there are consequences for any telecommunications
operator in the country harbouring unregistered Subscriber Identity Module
(SIM) cards, reports ITRealms.
NCC revealed this via its Director Public Affairs (DPA), Mr.
Tony Ojobo, who spoke at the Special Independence Edition of the annual
Conference of Directors and Heads of Public Relations organised by the Nigerian
Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) at the Sheraton Hotel Lagos with the
theme: Trackable Identity and Integrity in Business and National Reputation.
Dwelling on ‘Trackable Identity and the ease of doing
business in Nigeria’ Mr. Ojobo noted the long-standing position of the
Commission on tolerance of unregistered SIM cards by telecom service providers
on their networks.
Ojobo also warned those buying pre-registered SIM cards from persons and
businesses that had done multiple SIM Cards registration in order to resell
later, stressing that the burden of this practice lies with the Mobile Network
Operators (MNO) who are expected to deactivate SIM cards that do not carry
verifiable identities, “because operators are under obligations to have the
identities of all callers on their respective networks.”
For Ojobo, trackable identity is the ability to identify an
individual operating or transacting business in the cyberspace, noting that
within Nigerian environment, “some identity objects are bereft of digital
object identifiers, thus posing serious challenge to identifying someone
transacting business in the cyberspace.”
He explained that the SIM cards registration policy was
instituted by the Federal Government as a strategic response to the challenges
of identity tracking, especially in the context of kidnappings, terrorism and
other forms of criminality in the society globally.
Other measures of identity tracking in Nigeria, he said,
include the establishment of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)
through the NIMC Act 2007 and other extant policies and programmes such as the
issuance of International travel passports, Bank Verification Number (BVN),
Driver's license, Voter's card, the activities of the National Population
Commission and the SIM Cards registration programme supervised by the NCC.
Every SIM card, he said, is a subscription on a network and
NCC has over 130 million records being verified, and all of that will be
transferred later to NIMC as the nation's main custodian of identity management
in Nigeria.
“We all need to be able to identify those we are dealing
with especially in the cyberspace to reduce mistrust and fraud as well as to
improve the integrity of transactions. The total experience of these practices
will also help in the fight against economic and financial crimes,” he declared,
maintaining that increase in the level of ICT interface and reduction in the
instances of human, physical interface could reduce financial corruption.
Chuks Egbune/GEE
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