About 60m subscribers submitted their NINs – MTN

MTN Nigeria Communications Plc says approximately 60 million subscribers have submitted their NINs, as at April 25, representing about 85 per cent of its subscriber base.

The Telecom giant which disclosed this in its unaudited results for the first quarter of 2022, said it has supported the federal government’s regulation on SIM enrollment and also complied with the directive.

It would be recalled that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had required all operators to restrict outgoing calls for subscribers who’s SIMs were not associated with national identity numbers (NINs).

“Following the NCC’s directive on 4 April 2022 that all operators should restrict outgoing calls for subscribers who’s SIMs are not associated with NINs, we implemented the directive on approximately 19 million of our affected subscribers at that date,” it added.

“However, subscribers whose outgoing calls were restricted for non-submission of their NINs require their NINs to be verified before being reactivated.

“As of 25 April 2022, about 8.7 million of those restricted submitted their NINs for verification, of which approximately 1.2 million have been reactivated, many of whom are high-value customers.”

The telecom giant also revealed that it added 1.7 million subscribers to its network in the first quarter of 2022.

According to the report, MTN said its active data subscribers rose by 10.5 per cent year-on-year to 35.9 million, with 1.6 million added in the first quarter of 2022.

“Although our mobile subscriber base declined by 1.9 per cent YoY from 71.5 million in March 2021 to 70.2 million, we sustained the growth trajectory from the fourth quarter of 2021 as we ramp up capacity for SIM registration and NIN enrolment,” it said.

“As a result, we added 1.7 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. In addition, active data subscribers rose by 10.5 per cent year-on-year to 35.9 million, with 1.6 million added in the first quarter.”

Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria said active subscribers on its fintech platform –MoMo — recorded approximately 10.7 million active users as of the end of March 2022, and 166,000 active MoMo agents.