MTN, Airtel claim to have barred 9.7 million subscribers

9.7 million of their users are still unable to place outgoing calls, according to two telecommunications providers, despite having submitted their National Identification Numbers for verification.

The telcos, MTN and Airtel, revealed in their most recent earnings report that only 6.5 million of the 16.2 million subscribers whose connections had been banned had their NINs validated as of September 30, 2022.

Following a mandate from the Federal Government regarding subscribers who had not linked their SIMs and NINs, over 72.77 million GSM lines were prohibited from placing calls on their SIMs in April.

It said the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (Retd.), “has approved the implementation of the policy with effect from April 4, 2022. Consequently, the Federal Government has directed all telcos to strictly enforce the policy on all SIMs issued (existing and new) in Nigeria.

“Outgoing calls will subsequently be barred for telephone lines that have not complied with the NIN-SIM linkage policy from April 4, 2022.”

The ban reportedly affected 19 million and 13.6 million subscribers, respectively, according to MTN and Airtel. The telcos added that the policy's adoption had a negative impact on their revenue.

Airtel said, “In April 2022, the voice services for 13.6 million customers were barred due to non-submission of NIN information.

“As of September 2022, 5.7 million customers (42 per cent) have subsequently submitted their NINs and 2.7 million customers (20 per cent) have been fully verified and unbarred. Revenue growth for the first half of the year was impacted by the effect of barring outgoing voice calls in Nigeria for those customers who had not submitted their NINs.

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