From 2010 to 2015, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the four GSM operators in Nigeria spent about N46.1 billion on SIM card registration.
The breakdown of the figure showed that while NCC spent N6.1 billion, the four GSM operators, MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat, collectively spent N40 billion, with each operator spending about N10 billion.
ThisDay reported that as at 2013, MTN said it had spent N5 billion on SIM card registration, but explained that the amount rose to over N10 billion in the last few weeks, since the registration exercise is ongoing.
The other three GSM operators, also said they had so far spent huge amount of money, running into billions of naira on SIM card registration, but they are yet to release the exact amount spent so far.
It is however estimated that each of the three operators might have spent close to or slightly above the N10 billion spent by MTN, since they all started the registration exercise at the same time in 2010, as directed by the NCC, thus bringing the estimated amount spent by the four GSM operators on SIM card registration to about N40 billion to date.
