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HomeNewsAfricaPre-registration: NCC arrests six, confiscates hundreds of SIM cards

Pre-registration: NCC arrests six, confiscates hundreds of SIM cards

The Nigeria Communications Commission, (NCC), on Monday arrested six men in Kano for being in possession and sale of hundreds of pre-registered SIM cards which had been banned by the agency since 2O11.
The suspects were arrested in two separate raids carried out by the NCC operation unit backed by security operatives in the GSM village located at Farm Centre and the Yankura market in the Kano State metropolis.
Head of the NCC operation unit, Mallam Salisu Abdul said the operation became imperative following the rampant sales of pre-registered SIM cards in Kano by unregistered individuals.
He described the sales of pre-registered Sim cards as a criminal offence, adding that “the commission will continue to raid markets across the country until we are able to stop such nefarious activities.”
Abdul blamed the various agents of service providers who sell or give out a large quantity of such pre-registered SIM cards to individual to unsuspected prospective buyers without proper registration.
He noted that with the high rate of Kidnapping and other criminal activities are usually carried out with this pre-registered SIMs without proper control by those agents who gave them out in large quantity to these unlicensed individuals for sale to innocent people.
According to him, the six suspects arrested will be handed over to the police for proper investigation and eventual prosecution and in addition authenticated the sources of the SIM cards.
He added that similar operations are being carried out in Lagos, Abuja, Minna and now Kano, stressing that the raid will be a continuous one.
“Today, we have carried out a raid, at the end of which we arrested six suspects in connection with the sale of pre-registered sim card. It is a criminal offence to sell pre-registered sim card. The NCC had issued a directive since 2011 that all sim cards must be personally registered.
“However, you can go to the market now, buy as many sim cards as possible if you want, put it on your phone without personally registering the sim card and carry out some telecom activities.
“We are in Kano, we have done a lot of exercises, ranging from Abuja, in Minna and many parts of the country. The exercise is going to be continuous until when you cannot see any pre-registered sim card on the streets.
“Like I earlier said it is a criminal offence to sell pre-registered sim card. We will hand over the six suspects arrested to the Nigeria Police to enable the law enforcement agents, carry out a proper investigation and whoever is found guilty would be prosecuted.
“Our mission is to find out how the dealers were able to acquire the pre-registered sim cards. NCC had earlier issued a directive because when you register a sim card and fail to carry out any activity with the sim card within 48 hours, that sim card should be reverted to inactive but if you buy and register, that is proper registration. However, if you buy and register and decided not to make a call or conduct data activity with the sim card, that sim card should be reverted as inactive by the operator.
“We don’t really know how they do it. Probably, they are breaking the sim card, put them in their phone, make calls and return back to, indeed, I do not know how they do it. That is the essence of the exercise. So far, we have recovered more than 100 sim cards.
“We have bought one from each of the suspects, we have tested and confirmed that those sim cards are active and they are contrary to our regulation. Meanwhile, the Police would go ahead and investigate in respect of the remaining sim cards we have recovered to establish whether they are fully registered or not.
“However, one sim card is enough and perhaps all these sim cards are used to commit crimes in this country. It is the same sim card they are using to kidnap people. You can fall victim of this atrocity,” he stated.

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