The House of Representatives has directed the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), to review its deadline for the newly introduced SIM cards registration guideline to 10 weeks.
The Commission had in a statement on Tuesday, introduced a new SIM registration guideline, insisting that subscribers must have their National Identity Numbers (NINs) linked to their registered SIM data with their respective network providers, pegging deadline for the exercise at two weeks.
However, the House of Representatives at its plenary on Wednesday, passed a resolution that the initial two weeks was not long enough for subscribers to supply network providers with their NINs, asking NCC to make the deadline at least 10 weeks.
This came following a motion by the Minority Leader, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu, calling for an extension of the initial deadline, which has raised concerns that over 100 million phone lines may be blocked as many may not be able to meet up.
The lawmaker recalled that earlier in January 2020, the minister of communications and digital economy, Dr Isa Patami issued a statement wherein telecom subscribers where mandated to get their National Identity Numbers (NIN) and submit to the network operators, with the aim of ascertaining the true identities of all subscribers and thereby blocking loopholes currently being exploited by unscrupulous individuals.
He said “as laudable as the idea behind the policy may seem, the timing is very wrong because Nigerians have not been properly sensitized, as only a few educated persons who bother to read the dailies might have heard about this instructions, therefore trying to enforce this policy in a period where most Nigerians are gearing up for Christmas festivities may lead to stampede in the process of rushing to get registered which could lead to unnecessary death and injuries”.
According to him, if the NCC is allowed to cany out this directives, it will bring about untold hardship as millions of subscribers will be disconnected this yelutide period which could spell disaster in an already volatile nation like ours.
“If the NCC is not urgently called to halt their plans there may be unnecessary panic in the country which may lead to exploitation of vulnerable Nigerian there by causing more pains in an already pathetic situation hence the need to urgently Wade into this impending crisis”, he stated.