President Muhammadu Buhari’s led government has placed a ban on the importation of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards into the country, Naija News reports.
The government said Nigeria is now producing the communication material and hence would not tolerate further importation of the same.
The announcement was made on Monday by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami.
Pantami who spoke at the Nigerian Telecommunications Indigenous Content Expo (NTICE) organized by the Nigeria Office for Developing Indigenous Telecoms Sector (NODITS) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) at Oniru, Lagos State said Africa’s biggest country should not be importing things that could be produced within.
The Minister said: “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 per cent”.
Pantami urged stakeholders and citizens to support government efforts to boost local patronage and consumption.
“If we do this, history will be kind to all of us”, the professor of Cybersecurity added.
It could be recalled that Pantami had announced in June that the Buhari administration has established a SIM card manufacturing plant in Lagos.
The facility, built with private sector support according to him has the capacity to produce 200 million cards annually and also export them to other African countries.
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