NIN-SIM Linkage Has Reduced Kidnapping To The Barest Minimum – Pantami

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, has said the the policy of linking the National Identification Number NIN with the Subscriber Identity Module SIM has reduced helped to reduce banditry and kidnapping in the country.
Pantami said this in Abuja while rendering account of his stewardship since assuming office, in 2019. Recall that thew President had urged the citizens to partake in the NIN-SIM linkage exercise, saying it would help cover the nation’s security structure and identify criminals terrorising Nigeria.Affirming this, Isa Pantami said from the end of September 2019 to 2020 even kidnapping and banditry reduced to the barest minimum in the nation. He noted that before the policy was put in place, criminals were working with agents of telecommunication officials to illegally pre-register sim cards which were then sold to criminal gangs to perpetrate crime. “When I was assigned to supervise the sector on 24, August 2019, unregistered, and partial registered sims were being used to perpetrate crime in the country”, he began.
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“Nobody knew the total number of unregistered sims. Within less than 15 days in the office, we have engaged the NCC as a regulator. We have directed them to carry audit exercise to enable them to come up with unregistered and partial registered sims. They came with around 9.4 million which is enough to populate another country. It was the first time we didn’t know the total of unregistered sims in the country. We went further to direct NCC to ensure that by end of September 2021, no sim that is not registered will be on our network”, he said.

“NCC as a regulator implemented that effectively. From the end of September 2019 to 2020, you will discover that even kidnapping and banditry reduced to the barest minimum. It was a time that hardly can you spend one month or more without hearing about the kidnapping. The more you come up with policies to make the system effective the more criminals will come up with another strategy to compromise the policies”, he added.

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