Nigeria Now Has 220 Million Active Mobile Customers

According to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), there were 220,715,961 million active mobile subscribers in the nation as of August 2023.

Prof. Umar Danbatta, the NCC's Executive Vice Chairman (EVC), made this announcement on Thursday in Abuja at the 18th Abuja International Trade Fair, which was put on by the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI).

The 12-day fair this year has "Sustainable Financing and Taxation" as its focus.

According to him, the ability of Nigerian businesses to use new technology and have the essential digital skills to conduct business internationally is what determines how competitive they are. 

Danbatta said: "In Nigeria today, the number of active mobile subscriptions reached 220,715,961 million as at August 2023, while Teledensity stood at 115.63 per cent at the same period.

"Also, the number of active Internet subscribers was 159,034,717 Million with broadband penetration at 45.57 per cent as at August, 2023.

"In this new environment, the competitiveness of Nigerian businesses depends on their ability to leverage on new technologies by acquiring the necessary digital skills to do business on an international scale.

"This in turn benefits the economy financially.

He asserted that Nigeria will gain from NCC's regulatory initiatives to expand access to digital services, making it competitively comparable with other nations in terms of job creation and contribution to GDP growth.

"Emergence of new services and industries; workforce transformation, and business innovation.

"It is in our response to ensuring that Nigeria is competitive in all these areas that the commission continuously puts a number of regulatory measures in place to ensure seamless access by Nigerians to telecommunications services.

"This is in order to deepen competitiveness of the Nigerian economy by making our businesses and industries digitally compliant," the EVC added.

Danbatta stated that NCC would keep fostering a favorable atmosphere in order to maintain the telecoms sector's steady expansion.

In order to increase the Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for telecom consumers, whether they are businesses or individuals, he argued that a supportive atmosphere was needed.

"This is because, as a country, we need robust telecoms infrastructure that will help our industries transit to becoming Information and Communication Technology (ICT)- driven, if we hope to be digitally competitive on the global stage," Danbatta said. (NAN)