‘OnlyN1.5bn has been spent on SIM registration’

The Nigerian Communications Commission has said that contrary to insinuations that the N6.1bn Subscriber Identification Module card registration budget has been mismanaged, it has so far spent only 15 per cent of the amount.

The Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, said about N1.5bn of the amount had been spent so far on logistics and contractors since the exercise began a year ago.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Accenture Broadband Discussion Forum in Lagos on Monday, Juwah said though the commission had spent less than the N6.1bn budgeted for the registration; it had not finished the exercise.

“I can say probably that we have spent only 15 per cent of that allocation and that is around N1.5bn since we started the process. The process still continues and we are still going to spend more money, but the fact remains that whatever amount we expend will be documented accurately,” he said.

Juwah said the 15 per cent was spent on contractors and the provision of logistics that would ensure a seamless registration exercise.

The House of Representatives had, last week, ordered a probe of the SIM card registration by the NCC.

The House said the project, which gulped over N6.1bn in 2011, appeared not to have achieved the aim of identifying mobile phone users in the country.

In a motion by Mr. Abdulraham Terab, the House was informed that registered SIM cards were “freely being sold on the streets of Abuja and other parts of Nigeria.”