Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), Dr. Eugene Juwah, has said that the number of phones in Nigeria has hit 95, 886, 714 phones.
Juwah also disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at an interactive session with journalists. He said that NCC has registered over 110 million SIM cards since March 2011 with unregistered cards soon to be disconnected.
However, he admitted that NCC cannot disconnect fake and stolen phones from the communication network. He said, “NCC embarked before my coming there on a project to bar stolen phones but this was not successful because basically in Nigeria 50 per of phones come from China. The phones are fake. Phones have what is called the batch equipment identity number.
In fact about five million of them could have the same equipment identity number. The way you actually enforce barring of stolen phones is through equipment identity number registry so you can bar the phone and the phone won’t be able to make a call.”
This he said is a major problem and that NCC is still looking at the issue with a view to solving the problem
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