From death threats to drained bank accounts and wrongful arrests, Nigerians are paying a dangerous price for telecom operators’ failure to properly decommission old SIM cards before reassigning them to new customers.
By Epiphanus Obia
On a November afternoon in 2025, Emeka, a web developer, walked out of an MTN office in Enugu with what he believed was a brand-new SIM card, registered with his NIN, as required by law. He had picked the number himself. He had told no one the number yet.
Less than 12 hours later, his phone rang. “You are a scammer. You took my money and disappeared, and even stopped responding to your messages on WhatsApp.” The caller claimed.
The man, who spoke to this reporter on condition of partial anonymity and will be called Emeka here, was confused and alarmed. He had not given the number to a single person. He had not even set up WhatsApp on the SIM. Yet a stranger was citing WhatsApp conversations, payment receipts, and the name of a clothing business that had nothing to do with him.
What had happened is something that is quietly devastating the lives of ordinary Nigerians: Emeka had been sold a recycled phone number, one that still carried the full digital footprint of its previous owner, including an active WhatsApp business account, an angry customer base, and people willing to carry out violent threats.
“I received back-to-back calls from different people, all calling me a scammer. Then one person threatened my life. I literally removed the SIM from my phone,” Emeka revealed.
Bank Alerts, Drained Accounts, Stolen Identities
Over the following two weeks, Emeka continued receiving calls from the previous owner’s customers. Using Truecaller, he pieced together what had happened: the number had belonged to a vendor who sold clothing on TikTok and WhatsApp. The vendor had lost his SIM months earlier but kept using his WhatsApp, which remained functional without the physical card, to run his business. When he later lost his phone entirely and went dark, his customers came looking. And they found Emeka.
His experience mirrors a broader crisis. In May 2025, Dr Elizabeth Kandi, a UK-based medical doctor, warned, X: “If your Nigerian number was connected to your Nigerian bank accounts for USSD, if you didn’t use it for long, the network provider could disconnect and sell the number to someone else, but that person would be able to access your money via USSD.” Her friend had experienced exactly that: a new user exploited the USSD link to the previous owner’s bank account. Because the transaction was initiated from the linked number, no PIN was required. When an OTP was needed, it landed on the same recycled SIM.
As reported by FIJ, Ayomi (surname withheld) woke up on March 13, 2023, to email alerts showing unauthorised deductions from her GTBank account. By the time the situation was contained, the new holder of her recycled number had taken N100,000. She eventually recovered the full amount, but only after months of follow-up with her bank. On X, similar stories flooded in: @AdebajoAdebiy lost over N60,000 in airtime purchases from an Ecobank account; @elyteking4 had their Zenith Bank account accessed via USSD while they were abroad. The vulnerability runs deep.
According to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, 80 per cent of banking transactions among the unbanked and underbanked populations in the country are USSD-based. In this environment, a phone number is not merely a contact detail; it is a primary identity credential tied to BVNs, authentication systems, and mobile wallets like OPay and PalmPay. When that number is handed to a stranger without any financial deactivation, the original owner’s entire digital financial identity is exposed. According to Kaspersky Lab, SIM-related fraud in Nigeria surged 40 per cent year-on-year, with losses estimated at over N6.5 billion in 2025 alone.
When Innocent People Become Suspects Because of Recycled Numbers
The financial risks are alarming. The criminal liability risks are worse.
On October 16, 2025, as reported by Punch newspapers, Ibrahim Mariam Titilayo, a 24-year-old NYSC corps member in Akure, received a visit she was not prepared for. Plainclothes officers from Abuja’s Force Intelligence Department (FID) burst into her home, seizing her iPhone 12 Pro Max, an Itel phone, and her WiFi router. They accused her of ties to a kidnapping and murder case from January 2024, linking one of her Airtel SIM cards, purchased just six months earlier, to the crime.
“I was terrified,” Titilayo wrote in a post on X that garnered over 27,000 views. “They dragged me to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, threatened to ship me to Abuja, and detained me overnight. All because of a recycled number?”
Her ordeal was only resolved after activist Omoyele Sowore’s intervention and Airtel’s confirmation of her SIM’s clean activation date, meaning Airtel had to produce documentary proof that she was not the previous user. Legal aid from Barrister Tope Temokun was also critical. Without both, she may still be waiting.
She is not the first. In 2020, Anthony Okolie, a Delta State trader, was arrested and detained by the DSS after activating an MTN SIM that had previously been used by Hanan Buhari, the daughter of former President Muhammadu Buhari. The number had been abandoned, recycled, and placed back on the market. Okolie bought it innocently and spent weeks in custody.
In Nigeria, mobile numbers are routinely used by law enforcement to trace suspects. If a number linked to fraud or crime is tracked, it leads directly to whoever currently holds that SIM, regardless of whether they committed anything. As one X user put it, “What if it was a kidnapper who used the line before? The new owner would be tracked and arrested.”
How the System Works, And Why It Keeps Failing
To understand why this keeps happening, the economics are straightforward. As of February 2026, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reported active mobile subscriptions at 179.64 million, while total allocated numbers remained at 382.94 million. Recycling dormant lines is the industry’s primary tool for managing scarcity. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), was blunt about the business logic: “SIM cards are reassigned to reduce the dormant subscribers, as telcos are profit-orientated organisations.” Subscribers, he noted, do not actually own the SIMs in their possession; operators bear all procurement and recurring costs, making idle lines a direct financial drain.
The NCC’s framework sanctions the practice. Under the Quality of Service Business Rules 2024, a prepaid line with no revenue-generating activity for six months must be deactivated. If inactivity continues for another six months, the number becomes eligible for recycling. The same rules, specifically Section 28, state that all recycled SIMs must be purged of any NIN attached before reassignment. But real-world cases reported by FIJ, the ICIR, and BusinessDay, and the flood of testimonies on X, show this requirement is routinely not enforced.
There is no mandatory quarantine period to block OTPs or USSD codes during reassignment. There is no public registry of recycled numbers for banks to consult. There is no requirement for telecoms to notify financial institutions when a number changes hands. And there is no mechanism for WhatsApp or similar platforms to detect that a SIM has been retrieved and reassigned, leaving ghost accounts active and connected to strangers’ digital lives.
A shadow market is making things considerably worse. A 2025 BusinessDay investigation found roadside vendors selling preregistered or recycled SIMs for as little as N200, with agents openly charging N1,000 to forge registrations using falsified NINs. Chief Adeolu Ogunbanjo, president of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), personally went undercover, visiting 12 SIM registration points across Lagos, and found agents offering to register SIMs using arbitrary details without hesitation. “If you go to a roadside agent, that SIM may not have been wiped. It is still reactive,” he warned.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s ongoing emigration wave is adding further pressure. With more than one million Nigerians estimated to have left the country in 2024 alone, large numbers of SIMs are going dormant as their owners settle abroad, often unaware that their numbers back home are quietly approaching the recycling threshold.
The Regulator Knows. The Problem Persists.
At a virtual stakeholder meeting in April 2025, NCC Executive Vice Chairman Aminu Maida acknowledged that the evolving landscape had made it necessary to address challenges that could undermine consumer rights. An NCC source, speaking anonymously to reporters, admitted the problem directly: “This presents issues of security and integrity of phone number ownership.” The source revealed that the Commission is working with the CBN and security agencies to develop and test a cross-sector platform to share data on recycled numbers and flag fraudulent lines.
MTN, the only major operator to respond to a media inquiry from FIJ 2025, placed the responsibility squarely on the customer: “The new user does not have access to the old user’s bank account. All you need to do is contact your financial institutions about the status of the line and inform them to remove it from your banking details… MTN would not be liable for any fraudulent transaction that may occur on the line as a result of your failure to instruct your bank accordingly.”
That position is difficult to reconcile with the documented cases of Nigerians whose accounts were accessed precisely through recycled numbers, via USSD codes that require no PIN when dialled from a linked line, and OTPs that land on whichever handset currently holds the SIM. GLO, Airtel, and 9mobile did not respond to inquiries.
What You Can Do If You Are Affected: A Practical Guide
If You Have Just Bought a New SIM
Before inserting the SIM, ask the agent directly whether the number is recycled or virgin, and only purchase from an accredited telecom office, never a roadside vendor. Run the number through Truecaller immediately: if it returns a name or business tag that is not yours, return it and request a replacement. Also search the number on WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram. An existing account attached to your new number is a red flag.
If You Are Already Receiving Strange Calls or Bank Alerts
Document everything, screenshots of every alert, dates and details of every call. File a formal written complaint at the telecom office and keep a copy. If the telecom does not act, escalate to the NCC by calling their toll-free line on 622. Contact any bank whose alerts you are receiving and request in writing that they remove the old number from the linked account. If you can identify the previous owner through Truecaller or social media, a direct conversation can often resolve the situation faster than waiting for the telecom.
If You Are Travelling or Going Inactive
Update your number with every bank and fintech platform before you leave. Unlink the number from WhatsApp and any platform where it serves as a login or recovery credential. If the number matters to you long-term, use the paid retention services offered by the major operators. MTN and Airtel offer plans up to three years; GLO offers 365 days, which keeps a number active without requiring regular usage. If none of those applies, even one call or SMS every few months is enough to keep the number off the recycling list.
A Story That Ended Well. Many Don’t.
Emeka eventually tracked down the original owner of his number on TikTok. They spoke on WhatsApp. He granted the vendor access back to his old account so the man could reassure his customers and resume his business. The calls and threats stopped.
He resolved, with remarkable generosity, a crisis that was entirely the creation of a system that did not consider him at all.
Not everyone is so fortunate. In a country where 70 per cent of adults rely on mobile money for remittances and salaries, the stakes of getting this wrong are not abstract. Titilayo puts it plainly: “My number shouldn’t be a trapdoor to someone else’s hell.”
Until Nigeria’s telecoms and their regulator are held to account, the next person to walk out of a telecom office with a freshly issued SIM card may have no idea what — or whose life — they are walking into.
