(L-R) Wale Goodluck, corporate services executive; Amina Oyagbola, human resources executive, both of MTN Nigeria; Susan Iroche, CEO of FinBank Plc and Olufemi Adesanya, managing partner, OGMA Global Consulting, at the launch of MTN's Employee Value Proposition in Lagos.

Although the House of Representatives has thrown out the budget that seeks to empower the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to commence the registration of Sim cards in Nigeria, there are strong indications that the House may soon review its hard stance on the issue and approve the N6.1 billion for the NCC to commence the process with immediate effect.
This development is consequent upon growing interest in the exercise by a cross section of stakeholders who see the initiative as capable of drastically reducing criminal activities including cheating, scam, extortions, kidnapping, 419s activities, armed robbery and other vices in the Nigerian society.
BusinessWorld Intelligence can reveal that the initiative is now enjoying the support of not only the Presidency but also State Security Service, the Police and other security agencies that see the registration as being capable of assisting them in checking criminal activities that are mostly perpetrated through the use of telecommunications facilities. Also, an ad-hoc committee set up by the House, led by Dave Salako, chairman, House Committee on information and communications technology.
Salako disclosed that the committee has concluded its findings and would submit its report when the House reconvenes this week. While giving an insight into the report, he said the exercise has become necessary since it would serve as gathering of comprehensive information on over 80 million subscribers in the country; noting that such document would adequately be useful to unearth any criminal activity perpetrated with the use of mobile phones and other communications gadgets. “I am in total support of the exercise,” he said.
The House of Representatives threw out NCC’s budget for the exercise on the premise that it is not the business of the regulators to register Sim cards since it is not in the business of selling Sim cards.
Sani Saleh, chairman of ethics and privilege committee, House of Representatives and one of the strong voices against the exercise, insisted that “all over the world, it is not the business of regulators and NCC is not in the business of selling Sim cards”.
According to some other members who agree with this stance, Sim card registration is the responsibility of the telephone network providers and should not be borne by the government which NCC represents.
Salako, however, maintained that advances in wireless technology including handheld computational and communicational devices have led to the development of such systems that perform in real-time fashion. These state of the art technologies can be very helpful to predict hazardous and criminal activities on time so that necessary actions can be taken by security agencies to minimize social, economic and humanitarian losses.