The Federal Government has approved the issuance and registration of new SIMs from Monday.
Other suspended activities like old SIM replacement will also resume on the same date, as long as verification is done and the guidelines are fully adhered to, the federal government said.
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A statement by a technical assistant to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Femi Adeluyi, on Thursday, said the minister, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, said the activation of a new SIM registration with National Identity Number (NIN) process which gives provision for ‘Telecoms Master’ for phone numbers belonging to corporate companies had also been approved.
“An earlier policy was approved on the 4th of February 2020, while the Revised Policy was developed in early March 2021.
“The final amendments to the revised policy based on the directives of Mr President to make the use of NIN mandatory for all SIM registration were completed yesterday, 14th of April, 2021,” Adeluyi said in the statement.
According to him, the implementation of the policy will commence on Monday, 19th of April 2021.
The issuance of new SIMs and other suspended activities will also resume on the same date, as long as verification is done and the guidelines are fully adhered to, he said.
He said the key aspects of the draft policy had been presented to the stakeholders at the 4th Review Meeting of the Ministerial Task Force (MTF) on the NIN-SIM registration which held on Friday, 26th of February, 2021.
He said: “The Policy includes Guidelines on New SIM Acquisition and Activation, SIM Replacement, New SIM Activation for Corporates and Internet-of-Things/Machine-to-Machine (IoT/M2M), amongst others.
“The possession of a National Identity Number will be a prerequisite for each of these categories.
“For the Corporate registration, institutions will be required to appoint a Telecoms Master (at the minimum of an Executive Management level) to provide the operational Primary NIN representation.
“The Telecoms Master will also be responsible for ensuring that the users provide their NINs to serve as a Secondary NIN.”
For IoT/M2M activations, SIM security protocols would be implemented on the SIM profile to ensure that SIMs can only be used for point to point data services specific to the URL they are working with.
All other services will be barred, he said.
In the event that a data-only service is particular to individual use (eg home car tracking, WiFi, MiFi services, etc), the standard NIN registration process will be followed.
A Telecoms Master will also be required for Corporates requiring IoT/M2M activations.
According to the FG, the full details of the requirements for each class of service will be made available in due course.
