Telecommunication company, Airtel Africa, has said it could lose up to $4 million in monthly revenue due to the ongoing verification of customers’ National Identification Numbers (NIN) in Nigeria.
This came as the company disclosed that it has not been able to verify the NIN of about 4.9 million customers as the extended deadline of July 31, 2024 approaches.
According to the directive from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), telecom operators in Nigeria are to disconnect all lines linked with unverified NINs by the said date.
Airtel Africa disclosed this in its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024. The company, however, said it would continue to engage with the affected customers to get their NINs verified.
What Airtel is saying
Providing updates on its operation in Nigeria, Airtel Africa CEO, Sunil Taldar, said Airtel Nigeria has been complying with the regulatory directive to block all SIMs not linked with the owners’ NINs.
He said the telco had barred all customers without NINs as well as customers with more than 4 active SIMs which had a very negligible impact on its revenue. He added that 8.7 million customers have already been verified since the directive was issued in December 2023.
However, he pointed out that,
“Currently we are engaging with approximately 4.9 million customers whose NINs are yet to be verified, with approximately $3 million-$4 million of monthly revenue at risk.”
Taldar noted that the telco would continue to engage with the NCC and work closely with the relevant authorities to facilitate and accelerate the verification process to minimise the risk of service disruption to the customers, while also limiting the revenue impact from its compliance with the directive issued.
Backstory
In December 2023, the NCC directed all telecommunications operators in to undertake full network barring of all SIMs that have failed to submit their National Identity Numbers (NIN) on or before 28 February 2024.
Likewise, customers that have submitted their NINs, but remain unverified were to be barred on 15 April 2024. This deadline was, however, shifted to July 31, 2024. Furthermore, guidelines were issued whereby no customer can have more than 4 active SIMs and all such excess SIMs must be barred by 29 March 2024.
This directive is part of the ongoing Federal Government NIN-SIM harmonization exercise requiring all subscribers to provide valid NIN information to update SIM registration records.
What you should know
The largest mobile network operator in Nigeria, MTN in March disclosed that it had disconnected 4.2 million lines from its network as of February 28 this year in line with the NCC’s directive.
The company said the lines disconnected were those for which the subscribers did not submit their NIN. According to the company, since December 2023 when NCC issued an industry-wide directive requiring full barring of subscriber lines not linked to their NIN, it had subjected a total of 19 million lines to verification.
Out of these, it said 4.3 million have been verified and 4.2 million disconnected as of 28 February 2024.
In January, active subscriptions across the four mobile networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile had declined by over 6 million to 218 million as a result of the telcos barring SIMs not linked with NIN.