The Minister of Digital Economy and Communications, Dr Isa Pantami has disclosed that Nigeria now produces 200 million SIM cards annually and manufactures phones due to the need to satisfy indigenous policy content.
Pantami spoke as a special guest when the All Progressives Congress (APC) Professionals Forum held a mid-term reassessment of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja.
He said sim cards used to be imported to Nigeria and all that has become history since there is a need to promote the local manufacturing in view of the need to meet up with demands in communication and other necessary economic engagement.
According to him: “When this administration came on board, even SIM cards were imported to Nigeria, but as it is today, we have established a manufacturing plant in Lagos. The Federal government provided enabling environment for the private sector, as it is today, we have the capacity to produce SIM cards not only for our consumption but for the entire African nations.
“With the support of the federal government, the private sector has been provided with enabling environment to start the production of smartphones. Today in Nigeria, we have produces smartphones. When we came on board, more than 98 percent of software been used by the sector were imported, as it is today, we reduced it significantly by kore tyan 40 percent. It is because of this we came up with this policy”, he added.
He stated further that the ministry in collaboration with National Communications Commission, NCC, has designed an arrangement through the database such that once a sim card is used for any crime, it can be traced to the older of the sim.
“Every registered sim now has the biometrics and demographic data of the older captured. Once such a sim is used to perpetrate crime, we can easily through the information on the database to trace the identity of the person who perpetrated the crime. We have been doing that all along. This information we don’t want to disclose to the public.
“Because it is necessary we have to disabuse the mind that indeed the federal ministry of communication and digital Economy through the NCC is alive to this important responsibility for curtailing crime of all forms. Once these crimes are sim-based, we provide information about the person committing the crime within the shortest possible time to the relevant security agencies in our country.
“The kidnappers when they kidnap their victims, they charge tactics. Before they were making calls with their own handsets. Now, they are using the handsets of their victims. So, when you visit the database you come up with pictures of the victims, addresses, etc. This is the information about the victim. Still, once a call is made, we can be able to determine the accuracy of where that call is and for it to be trapped with such precision that we can say specifically that this call is coming from Suleja or so location”, he noted.
He maintained that the security agents have been given permission to intercept any form of transmission that is crime-related noting that they have been licensed to do that even though it is allowed for him to disclose such vital information to the public.
“I believe the security agents have also been given what we called lawful interception capability. They are licensed to intercept any message, transmission from anywhere in this part of the world. I am. not supposed to give this information to the public. This is highly classified information.
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