MTN Nigeria asked its consumers to use its digital channels for any support they might require when it announced on Tuesday that all of its stores in Nigeria would be closing.
The company did not provide an explanation for the shutdown, but it’s possible that it has something to do with the violent outburst that occurred at a few of its stores on Monday, when customers flocked to its support centres demanding that their blocked lines—caused by problems with NIN-SIM linkage—be unbarred.
Remember when all telecom companies, including Globacom, 9mobile, and Airtel, banned millions of lines over the weekend in accordance with an order from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)?
MTN released the following brief notification to its subscribers on its Customer Care account on X: “Please, be informed that our shops nationwide will be closed today, 30th July. We are available 24/7 to support you via our digital channels.”
BrandSpur report drawn from the Telecom and IT news discloses that the corporation did not, say whether or not the stores would reopen beyond today.
At MTN’s stores, violence Subscribers attempting to unbar their lines at MTN’s Festac Lagos store turned violent and demolished the building’s fence.
Continuing, at MTN’s store in Maitama, Abuja, irate customers were allegedly hammering and beating the facility’s gate and threatening to launch the planned statewide demonstration from MTN’s property.
According to reports, thousands of MTN customers in Oyo State protested the abrupt blocking of their SIM cards by swarming the company’s Idi-Ape office in Ibadan, the state capital. Online videos that are trending portray angry consumers hurriedly sending MTN employees home in reaction to the outage.
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The NCC has seen the need to curtail the fuss and instructed all telecom providers in the nation to reinstate all lines they had blocked due to problems with the connection and authentication of NIN associated with their SIM cards on Monday afternoon in an attempt to prevent a statewide disaster.
While acknowledging that the Federal Government of Nigeria’s NIN-SIM linkage initiative aims to improve national security and guarantee the accuracy of the national SIM ownership database, the Commission stated it is allowing the impacted users additional time to link their SIMs correctly.
According to Reuben Muoka, the Director of Public Affairs for the telecom regulator, in a statement: “The consumer is our priority, therefore, considering the challenges the blockages have caused, the Commission has directed all operators to reactivate all lines that were disconnected over the weekend in view of the short time available for consumers to undertake the verification of their NINs with their SIMs.”
It is expedient to know that Since MTN has the greatest number of active users in Nigeria, more of its clients were impacted by the SIM blockages, even though other telecom carriers applied them. According to NCC data, as of March of this year, MTN had 81.7 million active subscribers, while Airtel, the nearest operator, had 63.3 million.
9mobile’s database of active subscriptions had 11.6 million, compared to 62.1 million for Globacom.
When the government ordered telecommunications providers to prohibit unregistered SIM cards and SIMs that were not linked to NIN, the mandatory linking of NIN with SIM started in December 2020.
The date of April 15, 2024, was established for the whole network, excluding subscribers with four or less SIMs who have unconfirmed NIN information. The deadline has been revisited by the NCC several times since December 2023. Next, in order to provide customers more time to make sure their NIN details given are accurately verified, this deadline was re-examined and extended until July 31, 2024. Not all phone lines have been connected to certified NINs despite these extensions.
However, earlier on Monday, the telecom companies had to refute claims that were widely circulated and claimed the most recent SIM block was an attempt to thwart the planned demonstration, which was scheduled to begin on August 1.
They said that the fact that telecom firms were blocking lines at the same time as some Nigerians were getting ready for a protest was just a coincidence. To demand solutions to the nation’s growing cost of living and economic suffering, several youth organisations are organising a statewide protest that will take place from August 1 to August 10.
