What the NCC said
On 20 October 2026, at the 95th Telecom Consumer Parliament in Lagos, NCC Executive Vice Chairman Aminu Maida said the commission intends to extend phone-number verification beyond telecoms. Nairametrics reported that the tool is the Telecommunications Identity Risk Management System (TIRMS), which helps organisations identify recycled numbers and numbers flagged for fraud. Maida said the NCC is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to extend it to other sectors. His rationale: "A phone number has also become part of our digital identity, used to access financial services, manage pensions and shop online."
The report gives no timeline and names no target sectors. That gap matters, because the policy question is not whether to check numbers. It is who may check, against what data, and with what recourse.
The strongest case for the NCC
The argument for expansion is sound. Nigerian telecom rules allow dormant numbers to be reassigned. According to an ICIR investigation published in June 2025, the Quality-of-Service Business Rules 2024 require deactivation of a prepaid line after six months without a revenue-generating event, and allow recycling after a further six months. That article also reported that a new holder of a recycled number can inherit links to bank and government accounts. If a bank sends a one-time password to a number that now belongs to a stranger, a fraudster who holds that SIM can take over an account. A shared registry of recycled and fraud-flagged numbers closes that gap more cheaply than asking each bank to build its own detection.
The design also has a precedent. The report on the 20 October remarks says the NCC and CBN signed a memorandum of understanding in April 2026, and that a TIRMS portal gives financial institutions access to recycled and flagged-number information. Cross-sector extension is therefore an expansion of an existing arrangement, not a new surveillance programme.
Where proportionality starts to bite
The risk lies in the framing. Once a regulator describes a phone number as "part of our digital identity," a telecom risk signal starts to function as an identity credential. A flag that exists to tell a bank "this number changed hands" can become a reason to refuse service. Three design questions are unanswered in public.
- Scope. Which sectors, and for what decisions? A check that gates a high-value transfer is different from one that gates a loan application, a pension query or an online purchase.
- Error and redress. Fraud flags will sometimes be wrong. The reporting describes no route for a person wrongly flagged to learn why and have the flag removed. Without one, a legitimate customer can be locked out by a database they cannot see.
- Data minimisation. The Nigeria Data Protection Commission says it is established under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and cites Section 29 for controller and processor duties and Sections 34 to 38 for data-subject rights. Those provisions apply to any bank querying TIRMS and to the NCC itself. A sector-wide rollout should state publicly what each query returns: a binary recycled or flagged signal, not a subscriber's history.
The operator-side rules are still a proposal
The supply side of the system is not yet settled either. Nairametrics reports that in March 2026 the NCC proposed that operators give subscribers at least 14 days' notice before deactivating dormant SIMs, and submit deactivated numbers to TIRMS within seven days. The article describes these as proposals. Notice helps people. A subscriber who travels, or holds a secondary line for a bank alert, can reactivate before the number is recycled. But the notice only works if it reaches people who are not actively using the line, and the proposal does not say how.
The Device Checker shows the trust problem
The NCC also launched the *315# Device Checker, tied to its type-approval notice citing Section 132 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 and the Type Approval Regulations 2024. The notice says devices that fail requirements "may be restricted from accessing Nigerian mobile telecommunications networks." At a 29 October briefing, an NCC Lagos official said the platform "does not access personal information, messages, photos, contacts or financial data."
That is a useful commitment. But MTN's FAQ on the checker adds that device identifiers "may also be associated with mobile numbers for verification and compliance purposes." Each statement can be true, yet together they show why a regulator that links devices, numbers and financial institutions needs to publish a plain-language data map. When one regulator holds IMEIs, number status and bank-facing risk flags, the public will ask what is joined to what. Asserting that the tool is not surveillance does not answer that. A published schema does.
What a proportionate rollout looks like
The fix does not require delaying the fraud defences. It requires four commitments before the second sector connects.
- A published scope. Name the sectors, the permitted purposes and the data each query returns.
- A statutory footing for the flags. Define who can flag a number, on what evidence, and for how long.
- A correction route. Give individuals a time-limited way to contest a flag, with a response deadline.
- Independent oversight. Ask the NDPC to review the data flows and publish its findings, since the NDPC is the body charged with enforcing the Data Protection Act.
These are cheap compared with the cost of a trust failure. Mobile numbers are how most Nigerians reach financial services. A verification layer that is accurate, narrow and contestable will strengthen that access. One that is broad, opaque and unappealable will push people toward informal channels, which is the opposite of what a fraud programme wants.
Bottom line
The NCC is right that recycled numbers are a real fraud vector, and right to build shared infrastructure rather than leave each bank to improvise. But "working with the CBN to extend it to other sectors" is an intention, not a framework. Until the NCC publishes scope, retention limits and a redress mechanism, the expansion deserves support in principle and scrutiny in detail.