CONSIDERING THE LEGAL TENABILITY OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW
SIM REGISTRATION RULES
On November 7, 2011, the Federal Government of Nigeria passed
the Communications Commission ( Registration of Telephone
Subscribers ) Regulations
2 which required mobile phone
subscribers to allow their finger prints and a biometric map of
their faces to be collected and registered to their SIM cards,
which are then stored in a central government database.
Subsequently, on December 9, 2020, the Nigerian Communications
Commission ( NCC ) issued a directive for the suspension
of new SIM registration by network operators.
3 The dust had barely
settled when on the 15
th of December 2020, the NCC
issued a fresh directive titled Implementation of New SIM