Foreigners Use Nigerians’ NIN To Register SIM Cards

The efforts of the Federal Government to ensure that subscribers’ SIM cards are linked with their National Identification Numbers may not fully achieve its aim.

THE WHISTLER has discovered that some foreigners working in Nigeria are circumventing the policy of linking their personal telephone lines with their NIN.

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Our correspondent observed at a construction site in Ibadan that some of the Chinese workers use hawkers and food vendors at the sites where they work to buy SIM cards and get same registered in their names ( hawkers) with their NIN and would just give the ready-to -use lines to the foreigners.

The poor economic status of these hawkers and even labourers was capitalized on by these expatriates to circumvent the policy.

It was discovered that the foreigners pay between N3,000 ( three thousand naira) and N5000 to get a ready-to-use Sim card.

Two of the hawkers told our correspondent that they knew it was risky to register SIM cards for another person but said they did so because they believed the foreigners were not criminals but “just didn’t have the time to go through the procedure of registration.”

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One of the hawkers,who spoke on condition of anonimity said, ” The Chinese man buys from me regularly and I make profit here. Moreso, I know he is not a criminal.and that is why I bought the SIM for him,. registered it and link it to my NIN.

” He bought drinks from me and gave me N5000. The drinks he bought is around N850 so the balance is for the SIM card.”

Another food vendor at the site said, ” I can’t do that for a Nigerian especially a youth because I know they can use the line to perpetrate fraud and I will be arrested for their crime.

” But these Chinese people are honest and hard working. We are only helping them by doing this and they would soon go back to their country.”

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, had in December 2020 announced the integration policy of SIM cards into the National Identification Number database.

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To force compliance by subscribers, the Federal Government recently directed that telecommunications companies should bar outgoing calls from SIM cards already in use but not yet linked to the owners’ NIN.

This has caused massive crowds at various National Identity Card Commission offices in the country as Nigerians troop there to register or perfect their NIN issues.

The NCC has said that foreigners, who are not staying in Nigeria for up to two years do not need NIN to register SIM cards.

But it explained that those staying less than two years will require international passport bio-data page and letter from embassy indicating that their stay is for less than two years for registration of their personal telephone lines.

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