Telecommunications operators claim the recent blocking of certain subscribers’ lines has nothing to do with a national protest scheduled to begin Thursday.
Millions of subscriber lines have been blocked in recent days, raising suspicions that the government was attempting to squelch the planned demonstration.
However, the telcos claim the development has nothing to do with the protest.
“The Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has been drawn to some online reports linking the ongoing subscriber queue barring exercise to the planned national protest,” ALTON said in a Monday statement issued by its chairman Gbenga Adebayo and secretary Gbolahan Awonuga.
“There is absolutely no connection between the two.” The NIN/SIM link registration date has already been scheduled for July 31, 2024. The harmonisation of the SIM Registration database and the National Identity Database has been ongoing for some months. This is intended to improve the integrity of the National SIM registration database. Customers whose lines were recently blocked were identified by their service providers as having a mismatch between their records on both databases.”
It advised people to contact their service providers to resolve the situation.