The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has assured the general
public that none of the over 160million telecoms subscribers in Nigeria
will be disconnected or suffer service disruptions as a result of its
recent order to permit the disconnection of indebted operators from
other operators’ networks.
This assurance was given in Abuja
recently by NCC’s Executive Commissioner for Stakeholder Management, Mr.
Sunday Dare. Dare clarified that the approval given by the NCC was not
for any network to disconnect subscribers as being wrongly presented in
some media, but for some creditor networks to restrict services to
debtor networks. He stated that “the NCC is a consumer-centric
regulator; the protection of our consumers and the sustainability of the
industry are the primary drivers of our activities. So in this case,
even before we granted the permission for disconnection, we had put some
very stringent safety valves in place to protect consumers and ensure
that they continue to enjoy uninterrupted service while we address the
very serious issue of indebtedness in the industry.” ‘Aquaman’ stays
afloat atop N.American box office Giving a background to the issue of
disconnection of networks, Dare stated that “over the years, the
industry has been plagued with the very serious problem of interconnect
and facility indebtedness. Some operators have racked up huge debts to
others and have simply refused to pay. Now, we understand that there are
ecosystem issues affecting all operators and we are working with all
stakeholders to resolve these issues, but the level of indebtedness in
the industry is at an embarrassingly high level, and the whole telecoms
industry is at risk of failure if we do not act.” He regretted that:
“This kind of problem should ideally not occur in an industry where over
90 per cent of consumers are pre-paid. We had held several meetings
with the parties and given several deadlines for the debtors to pay, to
no avail.
The Nigerian Communications Act of 2003 contains very
strict consumer protection measures which we have continued to uphold,
such as the requirement that no operator can disconnect another operator
without the written approval of the NCC. But it appears that some
operators were taking undue advantage of this provision by racking up
millions, sometimes billions of naira in debts to other operators,
denying their creditors of funds to expand their networks and putting
the industry in peril.”
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