Representatives to investigate NCC's SIM registration exercise - The House of Representatives committee on Comunications over the weekend disclosed that it would soon begin an investigation into the N6.1 billion SIM card registration carried out by the Nigerian Communications Commission(NCC). Chairman of the committee, Oyetunde Ojo, who said this while speaking to reporters explained that the probe was instigated by the failure of the NCC to respond to enquiries sent to them by the committee which sought to know if the funds were used judiciously or not. Ojo said: "There have been a lot of things on that NCC SIM card registration which we will have to look deeply into. A lot of money was spent on SIM card registration and at this point in time, we have to know exactly what is on ground.

"We are new and we've been asking the NCC questions on the issue of the registration because before you go into number portability, you must be able to first of all identify which SIMs were registered and which SIMs were not registered," he said.

The lawmaker who said he was totally in support of the exercise, especially because of its benefits security wise however noted that because of the high amount of funds involved, there ought to be monitoring of its disbursement to make sure that there was accountability.

"But with the money invested in it, quite frankly, there should be a better explanation for it. This money is purposed for SIM registration and implementation is always the problem. If you vote over N6 billion for a project, by now, we ought to really get what that money was used for. Was it used for the purpose?"

Ojo expressed surprise that even before concluding and accounting for how the N6.1 billion for SIM card registration exercise was used, the NCC was contemplating going into another money guzzling project.

Adesuwa Tsan

Leadership/19/12/2011