No more sim card importation – FG declares

Federal Government has banned the importation of subscriber identity module (SIM) cards.

Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, made this revelation on Monday in Oniru, Lagos.

He revealed this at the Nigerian Telecommunications Indigenous Content Expo (NTICE) which was organized by the Nigeria Office for Developing Indigenous Telecoms Sector (NODITS) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The minister said the giant of Africa should not be importing things that could be produced in the country.

“Let me make it clear that the federal government will no longer tolerate the importation of sim cards. We are now producing them in Nigeria.

“Our aim is to increase indigenous content in the ICT sector so that by 2025, we will be self-reliant by at least 80 percent”, the minister noted.

Pantami implored stakeholders and Nigerians to give support to the government and its efforts in order to boost local patronage and consumption.

“If we do this, history will be kind to all of us”, the professor of Cybersecurity added.

In June, the federal minister has told members of the public that president Buhari government had set up a SIM card manufacturing plant in Lagos.

He said manufacturing facility, which was constructed with the support of the private sector support, has the capacity to produce 200 million cards annually and also export them to other African countries.