Nigeria’s mobile subscription drops 0.45% to 225.8 million 

By Onome Amuge

The total number of mobile service subscriptions in Nigeria dropped by 1.01 million to 225.82 million in March 2023, representing  a 0.45 per cent decline when compared to 226.8 million subscriptions recorded in February 2023.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), made the disclosure in its  latest industry statistics for March 2023.

An analysis of the data showed a decline in growth in the telecommunications sector for the first time in almost two years as mobile subscriptions have recorded a steady growth since June 2021.

As of February, active subscriptions across the networks of MTN, Glo, Airtel, and 9mobile stood at 226.8 million, but the telecom operators  lost about one million subscriptions the following month. However, the NCC data indicated a 3.59 million year-on-year increase in mobile subscriptions from the 222.23 million mobile subscriptions in December 2022.

Despite maintaining its position as the largest telecom provider in Nigeria MTN was the only major telco that recorded a decline in subscription during the period under review as its subscribers dropped to  91.55 million in March compared to 91.71 million subscribers in February.

NCC attributed the reduction in the telco’s active subscriptions to the abandonment of SIMs that have not been linked with the National Identification Number (NIN) as mandated by the government.

On the other hand, other telecom providers recorded an increase in mobile subscriptions as

The NCC statistics showed that Glo recorded a 44,850 increase in subscriptions in the month.With this, the operator was able to maintain its position as the second-largest operator by subscriber number in March 2023. In addition, the new activations on the network brought Glo’s total subscriptions to 60.79 million, up from 60.75 million recorded in February 2023.

On a similar trajectory, Airtel gained 28,420 new subscriptions in March,  raising its total subscriptions to 60.32 million from 60.30 million in February.

9Mobile recorded the highest gain in March as the database of  the fourth largest telecom provider in the country grew by 67,266, bringing its total active subscriptions from 13.07 million in February to 13.14 million in March.

Meanwhile, teledensity, which refers to the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area, decreased to 118.48 percent in March as against 119.01 percent in February. Mobile Internet subscriptions grew to 156.98 million, with broadband penetration rising to 53.50 percent and subscriptions declining to 92.03 million.

According to NCC, the teledensity is calculated based on a population estimate of 190 million.

Industry analysyts noted that the slight decline might be due to the high rate of inflation, petrol, and cash shortages during the period under review.

The  NCC  data also  showed that the telecommunications sector contributed 13.55 percent to the overall gross domestic product (GDP) of Nigeria in Q4 2022 compared to 12.84 percent in Q3 2022 and 12.61 percent in Q4 2021, indicating a quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year increase.