As a consequence of abductions done by kidnappers on Monday, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari enacted a law banning the use of SIM cards unlinked to a specific person. The crime organization members called the families of 168 kidnapped victims from unregistered SIM cards to receive the ransom.
Kidnappers usually call relatives of their victims with unregistered SIM cards, which authorities cannot trace. The new policy means that about 75 million phone lines that aren’t linked to the database won’t be able to make calls.
Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, explained that “it could be difficult to trace the kidnappers of the Abuja-Kaduna railway train attack who still use mobile phones with registered SIM cards to contact the families of their victims for ransom because they use their victim’s mobile phones. What we can do as the operator is to trace the geo-location of the phone and provide such information to security agents,” Adebayo said.
1,308 civilians have been killed in violent attacks in the last three months, while 1,333 have been kidnapped across Nigeria.
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