Punishments could be dished out to mobile network operators if they are found guilty of ‘frustrating’ the country’s mobile number portability (MNP) exercise.

This is according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) director of public relations, Tony Ojobo, who has said his organisation is investigating allegations of MNP wrongdoing.

MNP enables subscribers to change networks but retain their number.

"Where there is a deliberate obstruction of a porting request, that particular operator would be sanctioned,” he has said in Lagos.

A defaulting operator risks a fine of N200,000 ($1,200) per subscriber if discovered to have denied a customer porting, the NCC has said.

The NCC has also formed a ‘Mobile Number Portability Implementation Committee’ to resolve all issues arising from the implementation of the MNP across all the networks in the country.

"When such complaints come, the committee looks at them and find out what actually happened. In the committee you have all of the parties: you have the clearing house, who serves as the administrator, the networks and the regulator,” Obojo has said.