House Probes NCC's N6.1bn Sim Registration Exercise

The House of Representatives, on Wednesday, directed its Committee on Telecommunications to probe the expenditure of the N6.1 billion appropriated for the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) for the SIM card registration in 2012.

The Committee would also probe the agency and GSM providers over the failure to comply with the directive to deactivate unregistered Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards on their Networks.

The resolution of the House followed a motion sponsored by Hon. Oluwole Oke (Osun PDP) who cited the NCC's December 2014 discovery that about 45 percent of registered SIM cards on the mobile network were invalid due to non-registration or improper registration.

"18.6 million numbers due to MTN, 7.4 million numbers are due to Airtel, 2.33 million numbers are due to Glo and 9.46 million numbers due to Etisalat," Oke said.

The implication, he explained, is that the providers have selectively complied with the directive of the NCC, thereby compromising the cardinal objective for the introduction of the exercise.

He accused MTN with the largest number, of corporate arrogance, for refusing to comply with the directive.