The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida, has accused Nigerians who use their drivers and other domestic staff for Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card registration of being responsible for illegal registrations.

Speaking on Monday at an interactive session with the media, Maida stated that there are no more cases of unregistered SIMs in the country?s telecommunication networks, having concluded the exercise long ago.

?Right now, I can authoritatively say that no unregistered SIM is operating in the network, even though there might be issues, whereby a registered SIM is being used by somebody who is not the person who registered it.

?And I think this is where all of us are guilty because if you send your driver or house help to go and register a SIM simply because you don?t want your identity to be known, you are committing a crime,? Maida added.

He noted that NCC cannot be held responsible for situations where some registered SIMs are used by people other than those who registered them.

Admitting the need for enlightenment on the implications of such action, Maida urged perpetrators to desist from such activities capable of serious embarrassment.

?On our part, we will try to do more to educate people on the consequences of such actions because if anything happens, nobody will listen to their story of registering SIMs for people at a fee of about N5,000.?

Speaking on the use of registered mobile phones for financial crimes, he reiterated that registering a SIM does not deter most people from using them for nefarious activities. He, however, informed that it only makes it easier for tracking, which, according to him, the security agents have been doing.

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?The fact that somebody has a mobile phone doesn?t mean that a criminal will not want to use the phone. The issue is, will somebody with a mobile phone have the capacity to commit a crime? Yes, like any other criminal. Then, is it possible to track them? The answer is yes, and law enforcement agencies are doing much in collaboration with the commission to track cases where mobile devices are used to commit such crimes.

?But the truth is that without collaboration, we cannot do much in that space.?

To enhance service delivery in the telecom industry, the EVC disclosed that the commission is in the process of releasing a consumer satisfaction index, which will reveal the operators that receive the most complaints and those whose subscribers are satisfied with their services.

?Likewise, we will do the same on the compliance index to show operators that have infractions on their various regulatory obligations, and of course, quality of service, which is the biggest elephant in the room for all of us.

We believe that by putting out this information and notifying the operators about our moves, most of them will swing into action,? he said.

He noted that only operators with clean records, without infractions and who have scored high in terms of customer satisfaction, will benefit from the over a billion dollars investment expected in the country soon.

?Before the end of September, we are going to launch a public map, whereby you can type in your location and it will tell you which is the best network in that location. And this is going to be based on crowd-sourced data contributed by every single one of us because as we use our phones, we are also sending performance data out to the networks,? Maida said. (The Guardian)

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