Due to their “inability to verify” the connection between “their national identification numbers (NINs) with their subscriber identification modules (SIMs),” many Nigerians were unable to use their phone lines over the weekend.
According to the nation’s NIN-SIM linking policy, this indicated that their telecom service providers had blacklisted their numbers. When the federal government ordered telecom providers to prohibit unregistered SIM cards and SIMs that were not connected to NINs in December 2020, the NIN-SIM linkage program got underway.
The deadline for the full network banning subscribers with four or less SIMs with unconfirmed NIN information was set for April 15, 2024, although the NCC has revisited it several times since December 2023.
