Mobile subscriptions in Nigeria decline 1% in April 2023

• Mobile subscriptions in Nigeria fall to 223.3 million
• Nigeria’s mobile market remains competitive
• Nigeria’s mobile market could see further declines in the future

The number of active mobile subscriptions in Nigeria declined by 1% in April 2023, to 223.3 million. This was the second consecutive month of decline, following a 0.4% drop in March.

This decline was largely driven by a 2.8 million drop in subscriptions at MTN, Nigeria’s largest mobile operator. MTN has been struggling to link its SIM cards to National Identification Numbers (NINs), as required by the government. As a result, many customers have abandoned their MTN SIM cards.

Other mobile operators, such as Glo, Airtel, and 9mobile, saw their subscriptions increase in April. However, these gains were not enough to offset MTN’s losses.

This fall in mobile subscriptions is a sign of the growing challenges facing the Nigerian telecommunications sector. The government’s NIN registration requirement has been a major source of frustration for many customers, and it is likely to continue to drive down subscriptions in the coming months.

Teledensity decline 

The decline in active mobile subscriptions in Nigeria also led to a decline in the country’s teledensity. Teledensity is a measure of the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area. In April, Nigeria’s teledensity was 117.17%, down from 118.48% in March.

MTN, Nigeria’s largest mobile operator, was the main driver of the decline in teledensity. MTN’s active subscriptions declined by 2.8 million in April, from 91.6 million to 88.6 million. This was largely due to MTN’s struggles to link its SIM cards to National Identification Numbers (NINs), as required by the government.

The decline in mobile subscriptions and teledensity is a sign of the growing challenges facing the Nigerian telecommunications sector. The government’s NIN registration requirement has been a major source of frustration for many customers, and it is likely to continue to drive down subscriptions in the coming months.

• However, Glo recorded a 128,017 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 April 2023. The new activations on the network brought Glo’s total subscriptions to 60.9 million from 60.7 million recorded in March this year. 
• Airtel also recorded a marginal increase of 3,285 in its subscriptions database for the month, which brought its total subscriptions to 60.33 million from 60.32 million in March.  
• 9mobile recorded the highest gain in April as its database grew by 262,737. This brought its total active subscriptions from 13.1 million in March to 13.4 million in April. 

What you should know

Since the operators began to recover from the effects of the 2020 NIN-SIM policy, which resulted in a loss of over 20 million subscriptions across the platform, the April record is the second decline in more than a year. Up until the government implemented a policy requiring every telecom user to link their SIM with NIN starting in December 2020, mobile subscriptions in the country had been gradually increasing.

There were 207.5 million subscriptions across the networks as of November 2020. But it started to fall in December, and by August 2021, it had dropped to 188.9 million. However, throughout the previous 18 months, the operators had enjoyed consistent growth in subscriber numbers.

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