NCC Warns Against Selling Pre-registered SIM Cards

The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has warned telecommunication companies, SIM registration agents and dealers against the sale of pre-registered SIM cards as it poses great security threats to the country.

NCC’s Director on Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement of the Commission, Efosa Idehen, who gave the warning through his deputy, Salihu Abdu, at a one-day regional sensitization workshop on ‘Dangers of Dealing on Fraudulently Activated SIM Cards’ in Gombe said such acts were totally unacceptable to the commission.

According to him, NCC had arrested some agents and charged them to court but regretted that “It is painful to note that we still have cases of sale of pre-registered SIM cards. Some registration agents were arrested, registration machines confiscated, huge caches fully activated SIMs confiscated, suspects prosecuted, fines imposed among others.


“Such SIMs make it possible to commit financial crimes whose victims are ordinary hardworking citizens like you and I and the act make it difficult for our law enforcement agents to apprehend persons involved in major criminal activities.”

He explained that the objective of subscriber registration was basically to assist in easy identification of mobile telephone users.

He added, however, that some agents of mobile network operators produced fully activated SIM cards with fraudulent details and sell same to customers.

“To address these concerns, the NCC organized several meetings and sensitization workshops with different stakeholder groups across the industry at different points in time,” he said.

from today.ng