MTN Nigeria has barred 8.6 million subscribers from its network in line with the directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on the linkage of SIMs with subscribers’ NINs.
The telecom operator stated this in the Q1 2024 financial report, adding that the debarred lines impacted negatively on its performance during the quarter.
The company stated that the lines that had been fully barred belonged to subscribers who did not submit their NINs as well as those with more than five lines linked to an unverified NIN.
Commenting on the performance of the MNO in the quarter under review, the company’s CEO, Karl Toriola, said: “During the quarter, we also continued to manage the effects on our businesses of the industry-wide directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for a full barring of subscriber lines not linked to their National Identity Number (NIN) – the NIN-SIM directive.
“This impacted the development of our user base across all our key business units (voice, data, and fintech in Q! 2024.
“Although we had to fully bar 8.6 million subscribers in line with the directive, we minimized the net effect of the barred subscribers, and our total number of subscribers only decreased by 2 million in Q1, closing with a total of 77.7 million subscribers”, he added.
The industry’s top player maintained that this demonstrated the effectiveness of the company’s customer base management (CM) initiatives, which helped the company retain affected customers of the regulatory directive reduce churn and drive gross connections.
Despite the efforts of the management, the company’s active data subscribers marginally dropped by about 78,000 to 44.5 million.
Toriola clarified: “Notwithstanding these headwinds, we increased activity within the base, with voice traffic rising by 5.1% and data traffic by 40.6%.
“This is as a result of the consistent growth in demand for data and voice, supported by our attractive offers to customers and continuous investment in network quality and coverage”, he added.
