By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja
House of Representatives has ordered its committee on Communication to, within three weeks, investigate the Nigeria Communications
Commission (NCC) over the existence of unregistered Subscriber Identification Module (SIM), even after the sum of N6.1 billion was appropriated by the National Assembly for it to carry out the exercise.
Also to be probed are all telecommunications providers in the country over their non-compliance with NCC’s directive to deactivate all unregistered SIM cards in use from their networks, and the allegation of allied abuses of good corporate governance by the operators.
The resolution followed the successful adoption of a motion moved by Hon. Oluwole Oke as a matter of urgent public importance, seeking an investigation into the non-compliance with the directives to deactivate unregistered SIM, as well as other related abuses by telecom operators in the country.
He said NCC discovered in December 2014 that about 45 per cent of registered SIMs on the mobile network were invalid due to non-registration or improper registration, explaining that 18.6 million numbers of such were due to MTN, 7.4 million numbers belonging to Airtel, 2.33 million numbers are due to GLo and 9.46 million belonging o Etisalat.
He argued that the operators appeared to have selectively complied with the directive of the regulator thereby compromising the cardinal objective for the introduction of the exercise, expressing particular concern over MTN which had the largest number of referred cases, but in a seeming corporate arrogance refused to act in line with the directive.
He said: “The assiduous efforts of our hard working security agents to tackle incessant and sustain cases of insurgents and kidnappers may be attributable to the non-deactivation of lines still being warehoused by the criminal having acquired them as pre-ordered,
“The condition may worsen and prevent the achievement of the deadline to tackle insurgency and other forms of insecurity in Nigeria. MTN has not denied that the regulator had not variously served the telecommunication companies similar directives at the same time, while the other seemed to have complied, MTN blatantly refused, driven by pecuniary profit consideration at the expense of our collective security, has ignored the directive leading to the imposition of fine.
“If the issue of fine imposition and the alleged decision of MTN to negotiate with NCC is make the primary concern and the link to our collective security the parliament would be abdicating its primary responsibility.”
