In February 2024, there were 219.7 million active mobile subscriptions in Nigeria, mostly due to significant increases in subscribership reported by MTN and Airtel, the country’s two main providers.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) disclosed this in the most recent industry figures that were made public on Monday. The surge followed the operators’ January loss of almost 6 million subscribers as a result of the NCC’s NIN-SIM order.
Active subscriptions across the four mobile networks fell to 218 million in January 2024 from 224.4 million in December 2023..
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The February Performance
While Globacom also recorded a slight increase in subscriptions for the month, struggling fourth mobile operator, 9mobile sank deeper as it recorded a decline in subscriptions.
A breakdown of the operators’ individual data shows that MTN, which controls the largest share of the market gained 1.1 million new subscriptions in February. This brought its subscriptions figure to 80.9 million according to the NCC data.
Airtel also added 434,175 new subscriptions in the month under review. This pushed up its subscription database from 62.6 million in January to 63 million in February.
Although not as much as MTN and Airtel, Globacom also recorded a gain as it added 176,756 new subscriptions in the month. Globacom had 62.1 million active subscriptions in February compared with 61.9 million in the previous month.
However, 9mobile saw the red again in February as it lost 151,517 subscriptions. The telco which had lost millions of subscribers over the years, had 13.6 million active subscriptions as of February 2024, down from 13.8 million in January.
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Meanwhile, the telecom operators are expected to disconnect more lines this month, which may lead to a decline in the country’s mobile subscriptions.
According to a directive issued by the NCC in December last year, all telecommunications operators in Nigeria, including MTN, Airtel, and Globacom, among others are to implement full network barring on all phone lines for which the subscribers have not submitted their national identification numbers (NINs) by February 28, 2024.
The NCC’s directive also asked telecommunications companies to bar lines whose NINs have been submitted but not verified by March 29, 2024 and bar those with less than five lines linked to an unverified NIN by April 15, 2024.
The enforcement of the compulsory linking of NIN with mobile lines is part of the government’s effort to boost security in the country. The move aims to mitigate the potential misuse of multiple SIM cards for illicit activities.
