Following the enforcement of the National Identification Number–Subscriber Identity Module policy, the telecommunications industry in Nigeria recorded one of its sharpest corrections in recent years, with active voice subscriptions falling by 59.7 million in 2024.
This was revealed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in its 2024 Subscriber/Network Performance Report.
The active subscriber base dropped from 224.7 million in 2023 to 164.9 million by December 2024, marking a 26.6 per cent year-on-year decline.
The telecom regulator said the significant fall was driven by the removal of SIMs not linked to verifiable NINs and the rectification of a long-standing subscriber-count discrepancy by a major mobile network operator.
The clean-up followed the Federal Government’s multi-year drive to link all SIM cards to valid NINs, a policy launched on 4 February 2020 and jointly enforced by the NCC and the National Identity Management Commission. After several deadline extensions between 2023 and 2024, authorities set a final cut-off date of 14 September 2024. From 15 September, any SIM without a verified NIN was automatically deactivated.
