The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has said that the duplication of National Identification Numbers is responsible for the new wave of complaints from subscribers who have had their SIMs barred despite linking them to their NINs.

This, according to NCC, is due to the activity of third-party agents who duplicate NINs for unsuspecting telecom subscribers.

The commission revealed this at a recent media briefing in Lagos.

Commenting on the issue, the commission’s Director of Compliance, Mr Efosa Idehen, said, “On the issue of already registered SIMs and NIN, the issue is that some of those SIMs were registered with duplicated NINs.

“When an audit of the system is carried out, actual owners of the NINs reclaim them. We have a lot of things that people do within the industry, especially SIM-NIN linkage for money purposes. Yes, people register their SIMs and try to link their NINs but the agents doing those registrations do a lot of damage.

“We are seeing this and want to correct it. We want a situation where when people say they are the owners of their SIMs, there is no doubt.”

This comes from recent complaints by some subscribers that their lines had been barred by telcos despite linking their NINs with their SIM cards.