…NCC stands up against unregistered SIMs, sets up 12-man taskforce
…Mulls heavy sanction to telcos
…As Army highlights unregistered SIMs’ threat to fight against terrorism

By Prince Osuagwu

When the federal government, through the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC flagged off the Subscriber Identification Module, SIM registration in March 28, 2011, there were two primary objectives behind the action; one was the need to mitigate security concerns in the challenges of tracking criminal uses of telephones in the country by security agencies. The other, was to establish a central database of SIM card subscribers as an enabler to the overall national identification system.

Eight years down the line, industry stakeholders are becoming deeply alarmed that neither of the objectives have been achieved.

Phone related crimes in the country are still high, so much so that the country is ranked third in global cybercrime behind UK and US. The reason for this ranking may not be far-fetched considering that a greater percentage of the 91.6 million Nigerians on the internet, access the internet through mobile phone.

In fact, the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, at an event in Lagos recently, disclosed that Nigeria lost about N127 billion to cybercrime in 2015 just as the idea of using registration to achieve a central database for the purpose of a national identification system has also not yielded total results.

Harmonisation of registrations between the commission and the major operators took a bit of time and the issue of unregistered, improper registration and preregistered SIMs have not helped a total and reliable national database system.

NCC

Even though, to a small extent, SIM card registration has played a role in arresting some ugly security situations in the country, security agents have said that despite the help a lot still needs to be done on the issue of unregistered, improper and non registered SIMs that are in use in the country, as they fear that it has the tendency of threatening national security, if ignored.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, on Monday, raised the alarm that the proliferation of unregistered SIM cards is frustrating the effort of the military in fighting terrorism and other crimes in the country.

Buratai, while presenting a paper entitled Digital, Mobile and Computer Forensics as a Tool in Fighting Terrorism and Internal Threats, at the 6th International Digital Mobile and Computer Forensics Conference and training expo, DIGIFOR2017 in Abuja, said the Nigerian Army had made some progress in using forensic technology to fight terrorism, robbery, kidnapping and other related crimes.

He, however, said there is always a brick wall in unravelling the identity of some suspected criminals due to unregistered SIM cards they use.

According to Buratai, “one other challenge that threatens mobile forensics in fighting crime by Nigreia’s military is the proliferation of unregistered SIM cards. In some instances, these cards are registered on traceable addresses or even recognizable photos but when you go to the operator, you discover that some lines are blank, there is no face attached to it.

“In other cases, they are in the bush, water and sometimes in the hills or they do not exist at all, or the registration official registered the card without any method of confirmation. And so, when it comes to the analysis, you discover you are hitting brick walls because when you do forensic analysis, it becomes extremely impossible to use numbers that do not have a name or traceable identity.

“When you revert to Truecaller, you find out it has its  own limitations and security issues too.   I believe there may be need to raise the issue of unregistered SIMs again because about a week ago, we got some SIM cards that were not registered by vendors but were still working.”

Apparently prompted by this call, the EVC of the NCC, Prof Danbatta summoned all the telecom operators in Nigeria to a crucial meeting in Abuja, where he read the riot act to them.

He warned the operators that allowing unregistered or improperly registered SIM cards enter the market will no longer be tolerated. He reminded the operators that the issue of unregistered SIM cards had been the highpoint of several meetings initiated by the Commission in the last two years. He said the offence of unregistered SIM cards is a breach of the Telephone Subscribers Registration Regulation 2011, which attracts sanctions.

Danbatta’s words were emphatic: “As we are all aware, the SIM Registration was flagged off on March 28, 2011, which implies that we are in its 8th  year. However, while we acknowledge certain unavoidable technical challenges in the first couple of years after the kick-off of the exercise, the same cannot and should not be the case today.

“We also note that several attempts have been made, especially since my assumption of office over 2 years ago, to ameliorate and eliminate the incidences of improperly registered, unregistered and pre-registered SIM cards from being active on our networks.

These continuous incidence, prevalence and availability of such pre-registered SIM cards on all networks and must be stopped. CEOs should take charge of the SIM Registration process instead of others that flagrantly put business or profit above national security concerns. The Commission will henceforth holds CEOs liable for future lapses.

“For the avoidance of doubts, the prevalence of pre-registered and fully activated SIM cards in the market has led to the many security reports from the office of the NSA, DSS and Nigeria Police among others, showing the quantum of untraceable crimes committed through the use of improperly and fully activated SIM cards.

“In view of the foregoing, Service providers must henceforth give priority to national security and the protection of lives and property of Nigerians before any other business or revenue considerations.

“While we appreciate whatever efforts MNOs have invested in trying to redress the menace of pre-registered and fully activated SIMs, we do not intend to use this meeting to dwell on those as they have proven to be ineffective. Hence, we hope we will take up the opportunity that this meeting offers to put forward new initiatives and innovations to finally lay to rest the menace that is forcefully attacking the fabrics of our national security. Concomitantly, we should be able to agree on reasonable timelines for the actualisation of the new initiatives,” Danbatta lamented.

He warned that “where this fails, I am afraid, the Commission may be forced to exercise the last resort open to it against any licensee that allows its network to be used for the commission of this most disturbing incidence of preregistered or fully activated and improperly registered SIM Cards. The Commission is not ruling out very severe deterrence measures where it becomes obvious that such an organisation does not care about the national security of Nigeria and its people.”

Breaches and Fines

Hi-Tech can also recall that this is not the first time the commission is reading the riot act on the issue of unregistered SIM cards and the prevalent dangers they spread.

Within 2010, 2013 and 2015 the Commission gave several directives to the operators which include:

* That all newly registered and activated SIMs with no Revenue Generating Event (RGE) within 48hrs should automatically be returned to one way activation (receive only). But NCC has also come out to say that this supposed internal monitoring and control mechanism has been turned into a marketing slogan by the operators, further aiding and abetting the prevalence of fully activated SIM Card for sale.

*NCC also gave directive that any SIM card that is purchased as preregistered and fully activated between the Commission’s first Direction in 2010 and July 30th 2013 would be sanctioned.

It was as a result of the breach of this directive that commission, in May 2013 imposed a fine of N53.8million against the operators cumulatively.

*The commission had also said that in the event any SIM card is purchased as preregistered and fully activated after 48hrs of its registration, the Commission will enforce against the offending operator.

This same directive was breached and the Commission imposed N25.2million fine against the operators involved.

*The Commission also directed that, effective July 2013 if any SIM Card was purchased as preregistered and fully activated after 48hrs of its registration the Commission shall enforce against both the agents and affected operator.

The breach of this directive led NCC to initiate criminal proceedings in court, against some of the agents of the operators and convictions were secured against some of the suspects in Ibadan and Kano while many other cases are still pending.

Above all other directives, all the operators were mandated to set up a backend validation for their SIM registration process to ensure that data captured by their registration agents are in line with the business rules and data capture requirement and only after this validation that the appropriately registered SIM information meeting all the requirements are sent to the database.

In addition, the Commission on June 2015, directed all operators to within 21 days ending July 18, 2015 mop up all the preregistered and fully activated SIM Cards in their networks and submit report to the Commission; that, if at the expiration of the 21 days and in the event of the purchase of any preregistered SIM Cards, the Commission will apply appropriate sanction in accordance with Telephone Subscribers Regulation 2011.

By this, network operators were required to remove from their network system any SIM with incomplete registration and only activate such SIM upon fulfilment of the necessary fields for registration.

Failure to comply with this directive, was why the commission on October 2015, imposed an unprecedented N1.04trn fine on MTN Nigeria for inability to disconnect about 5.1 million improperly registered subscribers on its network.

It appears, the commission is about to walk that path again, if all other options fail. Meanwhile, it has set up a 12-man taskforce to monitor operators, ensure compliance and report back on the strategies to nip the menace in the bud.

The Taskforce which has six weeks to submit its report to the EVC for onward transmission to the Office of National Security Adviser,  has Mr. Efosa Idehen, Head, Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement at NCC as Chairman; Mr. Bashir Idris, Head, Projects; Mrs. Yetunde Akinloye, Head, Legal & Regulatory Services and Mr. Salisu Abdu, Head, Enforcement all of NCC as members.

The telcos have a member each. These are Mr. Tobechukwu Okigbo (MTN); Mr. Oluwatosin Cole (GloMobile); Mr. Sola Adeyemi (Airtel) and Mr. Damian Udeh (ntel) as members.

The list also include Mr. Ikenna Iheme (9Mobile); Mr. Gbolahan Thomas (Smile) and Ms Barbara Anozia (Visafone); Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) is represented by Major Emmanuel Akpan Bassey.

Terms of reference of the taskforce include that:

*Operators must put in place a robust and active back end to check cases of improperly registered SIM Cards before activation.   The use of electronic back end is preferable;

*The Taskforce should also look at the sources of these improperly   and pre-registered SIM Cards by asking operators to look inwards to forestall insiders abuse;

*Processes are regularly fine-tuned to establish the integrity of data captured;

*Clear up the systems regularly to wipe off an segregate between real and fake data;

*The Taskforce is also to re-examine the 2015 agreement the Commission had with telcos with a view to harmonizing that and add new solutions;

*To put in place proactive measures to nip criminal activities in the bud, beating them in their own game;

*Suggest preventive measures for the telcos to beef up the integrity of their registering processes.