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MTN’s Nigeria business – which constitutes its largest market in Africa – has been very much in the news in recent days, most recently thanks to the approval by the Central Bank of Nigeria of a licence for MTN's Mobile Money (MoMo) Payment Service Bank in the country.
Not too surprisingly perhaps, the Nigerian federal government’s call to operators to bar outgoing calls by subscribers that have yet to link their SIMs with their National Identity Numbers (NIN) has reportedly led to huge crowds at enrolment centres.
Nigeria’s government has ordered the country’s mobile operators to block SIM cards from making outgoing calls if they have not been registered to their user’s National Identity Number (NIN).
Although Nigeria’s NIN enrolments are now said to have reached 71 million, the country’s government feels not enough Nigerians have linked their National Identification Number (NIN) to their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and has approved a further extension of the deadline for the exercise to 31 March this year.
African telecommunications giant MTN on Thursday said Nigeria’s new regulations for registering SIM cards adversely affected the growth of its subscribers. The Nigerian government had directed all telcos in the country, including MTN, to register their users to the National Identity Number (NIN) database, an exercise it said will help to curb insecurity, fraud and cybercrimes. […]