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The House of Representatives has ordered an investigation into the registration of mobile telephone Subscriber Identification Module cards by the Nigerian Communications Commission.
The House said on Thursday that the project, which gulped over N6.1bn in 2011, appeared not to have achieved the aim of identifying Global System for Mobile communications users in the country.
In a motion by Mr. Abdulrahman Terab, the House was informed that registered SIM cards were “freely being sold on the streets of Abuja and other parts of Nigeria.”
Terab said the development had defeated the aim of providing a database for GSM users and to track abuses with the information given during the registration exercise.
The motion read in part, “The House notes that SIM cards registered in other people’s names are freely sold in Abuja and in some other parts of Nigeria. It further notes that the essence of registration of SIM cards is for control purposes across the country.
“The House is concerned that if this act continues, it will negate the current effort to get the true identity of mobile phone users in Nigeria. The House is worried that criminals can take advantage of using registered SIM cards to commit crime that can lead to wrongful arrest of innocent citizens by security agents.”
The House thereafter passed a resolution setting up an ad-hoc committee to investigate the registration exercise and how the NCC spent the N6.1bn approved for the project by the National Assembly in 2011.
Contributing to the debate, the Chairman, House Committee on Diaspora, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said accounting for the N6.1bn should be the condition for the passage of the commission’s budget for 2012.
Incidentally, the motion came to the floor on the same day that President Goodluck Jonathan wrote the House, urging the lawmakers to consider NCC’s budget this year.
“This House in 2011 approved N6.1bn for the NCC to carry out SIM registration. The commission must explain to Nigerians how that money was spent, because as it is, we don’t seem to be getting the desired results”, Dabiri-Erewa stated.
Terab had earlier told the House that there appeared to be a cartel, which had taken over the SIM registration exercise to ensure that it did not succeed.
Culled from The Punch.
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Simply Cheska...
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