The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has yesterday enjoined its subscribers who were restricted from making calls with their unregistered SIM cards to go and link their barred SIM to the National Identity Number (NIN) as a condition for the commission to unblock the SIM. The Commission disclosed that the information has become necessary as many subscribers were blocked from making calls using their unlinked SIM-NIN.
It noted that there is a viral weblink (https://bit.ly/NCC-Sim-Unbar-Gov-Ng) being circulated on social media and some websites saying, the said link was just a fraudulent design to mislead the general public from registering the SIM cards in a proper channel that is known, urging the general public to follow the due process that is known to avoid being a victim of cyber attack.
The agency explained that “For the avoidance of doubt, the NCC wishes to state categorically that it never issued such statement, directing subscribers or indicating that subscribers can unbar their SIM without a NIN. As such, the originators and peddlers of the spurious message were out to mischievously mislead unsuspecting members of the public. Therefore, their message should be disregarded.’’
The commission added that “The NCC is the national regulatory authority for telecommunications in Nigeria, and it is co-driving the process of the NIN-SIM linkage with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) as directed by the Federal Government.
It made it clear that “The Commission will not, under any circumstance, act contrary to Federal Government’s directive to MNOs to bar SIMs cards not linked to NINs at the expiration of the last deadline given for the NIN-SIM linkage exercise,” the NCC said in a statement.
Accordingly, the agency gave a series of steps to be followed by affected persons whose SIMs were blocked to follow as follows.
The commission said, “First, for subscribers that have not registered for their NIN, what to do is to get their SIM registered at accredited centers across the country and then link the NIN with their SIM cards through channels provided by their service providers.
“Secondly, for subscribers with registered NINs, what to do is to simply go and link the NIN with their SIMs through channels provided by their service providers,” the NCC said.
The commission reiterated its commitment to strictly adhering to the federal government directive for the SIM-NIN linkage to keep security in check and also to aid the socio-economic planning of the federal government for people falling victim to cyber-attack.
The NCC concluded by saying that “Finally, the commission wishes to also inform the general public that it is not recruiting at the moment.
Accordingly, the advertisement indicating there is ongoing recruitment at NCC, which is circulating on Twitter, and through polymerization, may have been diffused to other social media networks, is a scam and should be disregarded,”
