SIM card deactivation chaos

There is chaos at telecoms offices across the country as subscribers rush to reactivate their barred SIM cards by the telecoms, following the directive by the National Communication Commission (NCC) to all telecoms operators to commence deactivation of pre-registered SIM cards, incomplete registered SIM cards, and gave them seven days to do so or face […]

There is chaos at telecoms offices across the country as subscribers rush to reactivate their barred SIM cards by the telecoms, following the directive by the National Communication Commission (NCC) to all telecoms operators to commence deactivation of pre-registered SIM cards, incomplete registered SIM cards, and gave them seven days to do so or face sanction last month.
The directive was a result of a meeting between Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Department of State Service (DSS), the network operators and the NCC.
The meeting took into account crimes committed against members of the public either by kidnappers, terrorists, robbers and threats to lives, through the use of such unregistered SIMS across all the networks.
The NCC Regulation 19(1) and 20(1) of the Registration of Telecoms Subscribers, stipulate a fine of N200,000 for every pre-registered SIM card and for every incomplete and improperly registered SIM cards found to be active on any telecoms operators network.
The SIM card registration that was carried out about two years ago was meant to capture all subscribers, however some telecoms operators  had pre-registered SIMs that were sold to the public, thus  defeating the aim of the exercise, top of which is to combat crime.
Therefore they allowed so many irregularities, as their interest was just to get as many subscribers as possible. Otherwise there wouldn’t be millions of unregistered SIMs.
According to NCC, about 38.78 million phone lines were identified with incomplete registration across the networks, out of which 10.7 million were barred.
The fallout of panic and sanction imposed on the telecoms by NCC, is actually due to the poor supervision of the NCC, because if it had taken stringent measures, they wouldn’t have carried on as they pleased.
But as usual, it is the subscribers that are at the receiving end of the ineptitude of the NCC and the telecoms, because even those that  have registered and nobody has told the many thing was wrong all this time, get notification that they have not registered, and they should go for valid registration.
However some that got the message have no problem with their registration, but the telecoms sent the message in a bulk form including those that are not affected. This clumsy manner has angered a lot of people, they should have checked and listed those that have a problem with their registration and sent to them only.
In all this it shows the shoddy manner things that should be done are not properly done and only God knows how many criminals have benefitted from such lapses of obtaining SIM cards without proper registration or even without registration at all, therefore putting the lives and property of the citizens in danger. Some terrorists and kidnappers have been caught with a lot of SIM cards that they used and removed to perpetrate their evil acts.
You can never trace such criminals, no thanks to the telecoms.
Nonetheless, the subscribers have a contract with the telecoms and they should get a good service and treatment, not to be taken for granted.
NCC has however through its vice chairman and chief executive officer, Efosa Idehen and Yetunde Akinloye given the telecom operators in Nigeria till September 9th to pay a fine of N120.4m for their failure to comply with the directive to deactivate pre-registered and defective SIM cards from their network.
We hope this current validation of SIM cards would  be the last, people are tired of being subjected to biometrics by some agencies as it is, but to repeat it in one place it too much to say the least.
We need to have one database that would serve every other agency that needs information, so it is a welcome development that President Muhammadu Buhari has recently directed the harmonisation of biometric database in the county.