Nigeria Blocks 73 Million Mobile Phones in Security Clampdown

An anonymous reader shares a report: C onstance Chioma calls her son every morning to check that he is safe while studying in northeast Nigeria, a region plagued by deadly attacks by Islamist insurgents and armed kidnappings. Earlier this month, she could not get through. She later realised her SIM card was one of about 73 million - more than a third of the 198 million in Nigeria - which have been barred from making outgoing calls because they have not been registered in the national digital identity database.

[...] Nigeria is among dozens of African countries including Ghana, Egypt and Kenya with SIM registration laws that authorities say are necessary for security purposes, but digital rights experts here say increase surveillance and hurts privacy. Nigeria has been rolling out 11-digit electronic national identity cards for almost a decade, which record an individual's personal and biometric data, including fingerprints and photo. The National Identity Number (NIN) is required to open a bank account, apply for a driver's license, vote, get health insurance, and file tax returns. In 2020, Nigeria's telecommunications regulator said every active mobile phone number must be linked to the user's NIN. It repeatedly extended the deadline until March 31 this year. The government said outgoing calls were being barred from April 4 here from any mobile phone numbers that had not complied.

Workaround?

[Spaizatski]

Do they allow foreign prepaid SIMs on their network(s)?

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Naah, but I know a Nigerian prince you can call to get your number unblock again. Have your credit card and banking details ready...

Incompetence

[Pinky's Brain]

Something wrong with their hierarchy that they went ahead like this, this will kill a lot of people. Someone should have refused and called the president or something, anything.

Send a couple SMS staggered to blocks of numbers in rotation to remind them to register, if they didn't do that already. Then start blocking numbers in blocks, not all at the same time. Blocking 73 million people will completely overwhelm all the service desks.

Re: Incompetence

[Purevoice]

A Nigerian here, actually they reminded people several months ago however the policy to block mobile lines is just a bad idea. First of all, Nigeria is currently ravaged by terrorism which the government has refused to solve (there's a reason for that), the government then came up with a supposedly bright idea to have every Nigerian link their mobile number with their national ID card number for the purpose of combating terrorism. This prompted people to start complying and it got to a point where the gover

Re:

[NicBenjamin]

Overwhelming the Service Desk is actually probably the plan. Each extension would have come with lots of publicity about the plan, so people don't really have an excuse. Now your phone dies, you go to the service desk, and the tech makes you hand him your ID and tell him your number.

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

Eventually, after the 10K people before you had their turn.

The problem isn't blocking the numbers, the problem is doing it for all the unregistered numbers at the same time. Spread it out, keep it manageable.

Re:

[NicBenjamin]

Makes it easy for the techs. Can you imagine working at a Nigerian Congressman's office and having to explain to those first blocked numbers why they had to be first?

They are trrying to convince the world

[Otis B. Dilroy III]

that they are not a country of thieves and scammers. I don't think that it is working.

Re: They are trrying to convince the world

[IdanceNmyCar]

+3 informative for being a bigot. welcome to the new /., even more fucked than Reddit...

Re:

[Otis B. Dilroy III]

Wrongo, Miss Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.

This is the leftovers of the same British (among others) colonialism that raped the world for centuries. These nations are run by the same powers that inherited power from he British and French and are still squeezing the blood out of the citizens that they profess so loudly to care about.

And these inheritors all have dark skin.

And you know what, the bankers who finance them and the corporations who exploit their resources used to have w

Outgoing?

[xaosflux]

Why would a block on placing "outgoing" calls prevent incoming calls? Is this just a bad summary?

Re:

[Catvid-22]

Why would a block on placing "outgoing" calls prevent incoming calls? Is this just a bad summary?

Which part of the summary do you find wrong? A mother can't make an outgoing call, therefore her son can't receive an incoming call from her.

Nothing strikes me as particularly odd about the mother and son having a (tele) communication problem. It's the human interest part of the story though, so it may involve a fair amount of "creative" writing.

Sure, worry about privacy

[oldnuskeet]

Itâ(TM)s stupid to worry about privacy when you have widespread kidnappings and killings ffs. The identification of phones will greatly help pursuing those crimes if they actually try, privacy comes decades after solving that kind of problems.