The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has set up a 12-man taskforce to end the proliferation of unregistered SIM cards in the country.
Earlier the commission vowed to stop the menace of improperly registered, unregistered and pre-registered Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards.
Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, made the declaration on Tuesday after a meeting with all the telecommunications companies (telcos) operating in Nigeria at the NCC headquarters, Abuja.
The task force, which has six weeks to submit its report to the EVC for onward transmission to the ONSA, has Mr. Efosa Idehen, Head, Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement at NCC as chairman; Mr. Bashir Idris, Head, Projects; Mrs. Yetunde Akinloye, Head, Legal and Regulatory Services and Mr. Salisu Abdu, Head, Enforcement all of NCC as members.
The telcos have a member each. These are Mr. Tobechukwu Okigbo (MTN); Mr. Oluwatosin Cole (GloMobile); Mr. Sola Adeyemi (Airtel) and Mr. Damian Udeh (ntel) as members.
A statement from the Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Tony Ojobo, said the meeting on was the high point of several meetings initiated by the commission in the last two years with a view to finding solutions to the recurrent dangers of the improperly registered SIM cards in the country.
“We must safeguard lives and properties of Nigerians who travel by road especially now and the festive seasons and others who may be threatened or blackmailed via unregistered and improperly registered SIM cards,” he stated.
Danbatta said the dangers were real and everybody will lose at the end, hence the need to address it now before the situation went out of hand.
While appreciating the cooperation of the telcos so far in the race to resolve the problem, Danbatta said much was still left to be done “hence this meeting”, for continuous engagement, adding that “today’s meeting has the backing of the government which desires solutions as quickly as possible”.
