Nigeria's Mobile Lines Climb Back to 200 Million After SIM Purge

Nigeria's active mobile subscriptions reached 200.3 million in September 2026, a 29% rise over two years and a full recovery from the purge triggered by the National Identification Number (NIN)-SIM linkage policy. But the headline figure conceals two realities the regulator's own data makes plain: the market is a duopoly in practice, and the 200 million number counts SIM cards, not people.

The recovery is concentrated. MTN and Airtel together account for roughly 86% of all active connections, according to the latest data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). MTN alone held 104.6 million subscriptions in September; Airtel held 68 million. Their combined 172.7 million lines tower over Globacom's 23.5 million and T2's 3.6 million.

The commission itself flags the interpretive trap. One person can hold multiple SIM cards, and active connections also include SIMs inside routers and other devices. The 200 million figure therefore says nothing definitive about how many Nigerians actually own or use a mobile phone. In short: lines, not citizens.

What did the NIN-SIM purge actually cost?

The milestone marks the industry's climb back from a deliberate contraction. The NIN-SIM policy, introduced in 2020, required subscribers to link their lines to verified national identity numbers. Enforcement intensified in 2024, when operators completed verification and disconnected lines without valid NIN records.

The toll was severe. In its 2024 year-end performance report, the NCC said active subscriptions fell from 224.7 million in 2023 to 164.9 million in 2024 — a loss of 59.8 million connections, or 26.6%, in a single year. The commission attributed the drop to removing unlinked SIMs and to correcting a major discrepancy in one operator's subscriber figures. It did not name that operator, a gap worth noting when assessing how much of the crash was policy versus bookkeeping.

Compliance, at least, was near total. By August 2024, more than 153 million SIM cards were linked to NINs — 96% compliance, per the regulator. September 14, 2024 was the final deadline for operators to finish the exercise.

Is the recovery matched by network quality?

Not evenly. Data consumption grew about 51% year-on-year to 1.73 million terabytes in September 2026 — a striking indicator of demand. Yet the technology mix lags. 4G carries 54.37% of connections and 5G just 5.05%. Older 2G and 3G networks still serve 36.42% and 4.16% of connections respectively. More than four in ten Nigerian lines still run on pre-4G technology.

Fixed broadband tells a more dynamic story. Fibre-to-the-X subscriptions — connections to homes, offices, streets and hubs — grew roughly 67% between the first and third quarters of 2026, pointing to fibre buildout beyond the mobile networks.

What does this mean for the economy?

Telecommunications now claims a bigger slice of national output. The sector contributed 9.72% of GDP in the second quarter of 2026, up from 9.20% in the same period of 2025, according to the NCC. The commission cautions that figures for late 2024 and early 2025 were distorted by the National Bureau of Statistics' GDP rebasing, so the year-on-year comparison deserves some skepticism.

The takeaway: Nigeria's connectivity market has regained its scale and then some, but the gains flow overwhelmingly to two operators, the subscriber base is smaller than the SIM count implies, and nearly 41% of connections still sit on legacy networks. Whether the NCC uses this recovered footing to address concentration and the 2G long tail is the question the September figures raise but do not answer.