Large crowds have filled MTN outlets in Lagos after the giant telco disconnected at least 20 million subscribers in Nigeria.
Following an earlier directive by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) to disconnect SIMs with irregular user identities in correlation with their National Identification Numbers (NIN), MTN at the weekend began disconnection of subscribers whose identity are not in tandem with their NIN.
MTN has the highest number of cellular subscribers in Nigeria with 78 million users. Out of this number, The Nigerian Economy reports that 25% of subscribers phone lines have been blocked representing about 20 million, as MTN tries to obey the NCC order.
At the Ojodu, Lagos office of MTN, a large crowd of people who have been disconnected overran the outlet. The customers expressed anxiety and frustration as MTN workers could no longer control the crowd.
The development is the same at the telco’s Opebi, Lagos outlet, when The Nigerian Economy visited the two places today.
An aggrieved customer, Beatrice Adebayo told our correspondent that she had visited MTN Ojodu office twice since yesterday, but the crowd remained untamed. She called on the NCC to prevail on the telco to restore customers phone numbers with immediate effect.
She said: “I discovered that my phone number was disconnected at the weekend, so I came here yesterday only to meet a huge crowd. I left and returned early this morning but met even a bigger crowd. I think some customers slept here last night just to be among the first set customers to be attended to as MTN workers open office this morning.
“This is not good and it is unacceptable. We cannot go through this type of anguish and untold inconvenience in order to patronize a telecom service provider. The government should do something fast about this ugly development.”
Another MTN customer at the Opebi, Ikeja office, Dupe Babalola said: “I have wasted over three hours here on a Monday morning just to regularise my identity on my phone line. This is a phone number I have been using since 2002. With all of these, people with evil intentions still commit crimes with phone lines. Our system punishes law-abidjng citizens but profits criminals. We can’t continue like this. The NCC must stop this hardship. There’s already too much hardship in this country right now.”
Meanwhile, the NCC on Mknday said it has reverse the disconnection order to allow Nigerians to connect their SIMs to their NIN.
The telecommunications regulator noted that the objectives of the exercise include enhancing national security and ensuring the national SIM ownership database is accurate.
“The consumer is our priority, therefore, considering the challenges the blockages have caused, the Commission has directed all operators to reactivate all lines that were disconnected over the weekend in view of the short time available for consumers to undertake the verification of their NINs with their SIMs.
“Reactivated consumers are to note that this is for a limited period to allow them to properly link their NIN to their SIM,” NCC stated.
