Hardship Protests: Telcos Count Losses, Insist Subscribers Must Complete NIN-SIM Linkage Exercise 

Emma Okonji

As the Hardship protests across the country enter into its eight-day today, telecoms operators have started counting their losses, saying the telecoms industry has suffered both social-economic and financial losses running into trillions of naira.

Although President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had in his nationwide broadcast on Sunday, called on protesters to put an end to the protests, Nigerians are of the view that Tinubu’s Sunday broadcast did not address the demands of the protesters, which include eradication of insecurity, return of fuel subsidy, and reduction in poverty and hunger, among others.  

Citing the one day closure of all call centres and customer experience centres across the country; the destruction of customer experience centre facilities; the burning of Kano Digital Centre that was built by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); and the cutting of fibre cable infrastructure that affected connectivity services of 9mobile across the country among others, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), and spokesperson for telecoms operators, Gbenga Adebayo, said the accumulation of the losses suffered by telecoms operators, ran into trillions of naira, to say the least.

According to him, aside the financial losses, there is also the socio-economic cost, where telecoms subscribers and staff of the customer experience centres whose facilities were vandalised, also suffered emotional trauma when they were harassed by the protesters during the destruction of the centres.

“We cannot put all the losses into monetary values, but I can assure you that what was lost ran into trillions of naira, with negative impact on the operators and the subscribers. During the period were all call centres and experience centres were shutdown, people could not carry out their enrolment exercise for the National Identification Number (NIN) and they were unable to link their NIN to their Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards,” Adebayo said, while describing the losses as monumental.

He however called on telecoms subscribers who were yet to complete the NIN-SIM linkage exercise, to do so without further delay, warning that the NCC will revisit it, even though it has ordered telecoms operators to reactivate all SIM cards that were disconnected recently.

“The federal government is serious about the NIN-SIM linkage in order to address insecurity in the country, and NCC would continue to enforce it, until Nigerians have completely linked their NIN to their SIM cards. The recent order to reactivate all deactivated SIM cards is temporal, in order to avoid building up further tension that had already been created by the protesters. As soon as it is over, NCC will surely revisit the NIN-SIM linkage exercise, and any subscriber that refuses to link his or her NIN, will be disconnected in the future. So I will advise subscribers who are yet to link their NIN to do so now to avoid future agitation,” Adebayo said.

Worried about the losses incurred, especially with the burning of the Kano Digital  Centre, the Minster of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who lamented such massive destruction, said billions of naira was lost to the burning of the entire building, including the installed computer systems and other appliances.

Governor of Kano State, Abba Kabir Yusuf, who also lamented the destruction and looting of the ICT hub, called on protesters to restrain from further destroying public facilities.

Meanwhile, 9mobile which was mostly affected by the cable infrastructure cuts, said it has restored connectivity to some areas, while still working to achieve full restoration of the affected infrastructure.