The Nigeria Communication Commission, NCC, disclosed Monday that a major setback experienced in the registration of SIM cards is that some agents use the pictures of goats and yams in place of human beings.

Head of compliance, monitoring and enforcement of NCC, Efosa Idehen, who said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, in Ibadan, said in some cases they find pictures of women with men’s name and vice versa.

Idehen said the discovery was made following information it received that some people were buying SIM cards without their biometrics.

“It may interest you to know that after the telephone operators might have completed their own part of the registration and forwarded it to us as the regulators; we sometimes find pictures of goats and yams,” he said.

According to him, the NCC also discovered that that those SIM cards that were not registered were those used by criminals like kidnappers and are usually sold at a premium sum of N1, 500 as against N100 for the normal ones.

“We have had to sanction GSM operators in the past for not monitoring the activities of their agents,” the NCC boss said.

Efosa warned that anyone who sells fully activated SIM cards is as guilty as the person who registers the card because the cards are not supposed to be registered before sale and if found would be prosecuted.

The offence attracts a fine of up to N200, 000.

NCC is mandated to create a credible data base of Nigerians using the GSM.