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Nigeria: NCC to Register Phone Subscribers' Identities
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This Day (Lagos)
18 July 2008
Posted to the web 18 July 2008
Patrick Ugeh and Efem Nkanga
Abuja
Hello, who's speaking please? Where do you live? Where do you work? Soon, the identities of every caller will be known across the networks without any hassles as the regulatory authorities move to check the use of mobile phones for crime.
The Nigerian Communi-cations Commission (NCC) is setting up subscriber identity modems - SIM cards will now be registered to capture the vital personal data, including passport photograph of every phone user.
At a stakeholders' meeting in Abuja yesterday, the Executive Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NCC, Mr. Ernest Ndukwe, said the move was at the instance of security agencies which had expressed great concern at the incidence of criminals employing telephony to perpetrate nefarious activities.
He announced that SIM cards that failed to be registered after the scheme commences would be deactivated, adding that those to be affected in the registration are prepaid subscribers as the post-paid ones are already registered before being activated.
"A definite time-frame will be set when operators will be required to ensure compliance in recording the personal details of all customers who buy pre-paid SIM cards.
"Subscribers can continue to use their pre-paid SIM cards if they register their particulars with their mobile operators during the registration period. All unregistered prepaid cards may be deactivated by the deadline of the registration period," he said.
A "small industry group" comprising representatives of GSM and CDMA operators, the security agencies, the regulatory body, the media and phone dealers, among others, was set up by Ndukwe with the mandate to examine the modalities of implementing the plan.
It is their recommendations that will determine when this scheme will start and the time-frame for the initial registration, THISDAY gathered.
The NCC boss disclosed that other countries such as Japan, Germany, South Africa and Norway, had requirements for the identification and registration of prepaid mobile phone users, adding that the data bases were accessible by law enforcement bodies while compliance was enforced.
"In the jurisdictions cited above," he continued, "the rationale underlying identification requirements includes the improvement of law enforcement and national security as well as the provision of emergency services and public number directories."
On the converse side, he acknowledged, were people who cite privacy concerns and cost of implementing legislation, as well as lack of effectiveness of registration to detect and deter criminal activity.
"The commission has observed that prepaid SIM card is an area of security concern," he added. "Criminals exploit the anonymity of prepaid SIM cards to avoid detection. The industry must address this problem urgently as there are about 50 million active prepaid SIM cards in circulation in Nigeria as at May 2008."
According to Ndukwe, the absence of national identification for the majority of Nigerians was a major hurdle to the project, but stated that the problem was not insurmountable and that the project might be the catalyst for the development of a credible data base.
"We believe that if managed and administered, the data base will be a veritable source of information not only for the sector but for the business and financial sector of the economy," he said.
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Among issues canvassed at yesterday's talk shop was the need to have a telephone directory that would make accessing other phone users available.
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