The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has clarified earlier report, which quoted the Commission to have said 95.7million subscriber SIM registrations are invalid.
The Commission said the figure quoted not invalid, but undergoing verification, emphasising that clarification is for the benefit of subscribers and other critical stakeholders who rely on subscriber registration data.
“Although the figures quoted in the news reports were disclosed at a Sensitization Workshop to illustrate the quality of initial data submissions, subsequent process enhancements by the NCC and operators have led to better quality submissions. The process is ongoing, and is constantly being reviewed for higher efficiency. NCC disclosed the outcome of its initial scrubbing exercise at the Sensitization Workshop in order to underscore the need for subscriber registration agents and operators to ensure strict adherence to the Subscriber Registration Regulations of 2011 as well as the technical specifications for subscriber registration,” it said.
The Commission added that the process of scrubbing registration data submitted by operators is an ongoing one and that so far, over 60million records have been “scrubbed” successfully. It described “Scrubbing” as a language in telecoms parlance, which refers to the screening process of verifying biometric and personal information submitted by all operators in respect of each of their subscribers.
It also encourages all subscribers to ensure that their details are properly captured in order to avoid unnecessary complications which may affect their banking, educational, health, travel and other pursuits which rely on proof of personal identity.
“We also wish to assure all stakeholders that the Commission will continue to aggressively pursue the national interest objectives of delivering an accurate database of telephone subscribers in Nigeria. We expect all players in the subscriber registration value chain to support the national security objectives of the exercise as NCC will continue to show zero tolerance for deviations from the process,” it stated.