‘More NCC Emergency Centres Will be Operational Next Year’
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, has said that the commission will ensure that more emergency centres in the country become operational next year.
He gave the assurance in Abuja recently, while receiving a delegation of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) led by its Director General, Julie Okah- Donli.
Danbatta said the projects of building and equipping the emergency centres in the 36 states of the federation and Abuja were currently at various stages of completion.
According to him, “The federal government has mandated the commission to provide emergency communications centres in all states of the federation and Abuja. We already have 3 digit emergency line, 112, which is equivalent to 911 in other climes,” he pointed out.”
Allaying the concern of high telecommunications services prices in the country, the NCC boss noted that Nigeria has one of the lowest telecom tariffs in the world.
He said the NCC has so far resisted pressure from telecom operators calling for tariff hike of telecommunications services like voice calls and internet data to protect many people from being deprived of access to communications.
“We will continue to look at the regime of fees being charged by service providers, I am talking on voice services, SMS or data service, to ensure these rates are consistent with global best practices as Nigeria cannot live in isolation.
“We do, from time to time, benchmarking so that Nigeria will not be in the forefront of charging very high prices as well as ensure that the mobile operators are not charging amounts that are unrealistic, which will make them lose their business,” he explained.
Okah-Donli told the EVC that she was at the NCC’s headquarters to seek for collaboration and supports against human trafficking in Nigeria.
She also revealed that a new subject on human trafficking would start as an independent subject in primary and secondary across Nigeria in the next academic session, 2018/2019.