Nigeria’s active mobile subscriptions hit 200 million after NIN-SIM purge
The rebound, however, remains concentrated among two operators, with MTN and Airtel accounting for about 86% of active connections, leaving Globacom and T2 with a much smaller share of the market.
Nigeria's mobile subscription numbers have reached a significant milestone, with 200.3 million active connections as of September 2026, marking a 29% increase over two years. This surge in usage, which saw an 86% share controlled by two dominant operators—MTN with 104.6 million connections and Airtel with 68 million—was triggered by the enforcement of the National Identification Number (NIN)-SIM linkage policy in 2020.
The policy required mobile subscribers to tie their phone lines to verified NINs, leading to a sharp drop in active connections from 224.7 million in 2023 to 164.9 million in 2024. Despite this, compliance with the policy reached 96% by August 2024, with over 153 million SIM cards linked to NINs. The rest of the market is held by Globacom with 23.5 million connections and T2 with 3.6 million.
Mobile data usage also saw a rise, expanding by 51% year-on-year to 1.73 million terabytes in September 2026. However, the adoption of faster networks like 5G remains uneven, with 4G still dominating at 54.37%. The sector's contribution to Nigeria's GDP has grown steadily, hitting 9.72% in Q2 2026, up from 9.20% a year earlier.
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