‘Shittu Must Work with NCC, NITDA, Others to Succeed in Office’

Given his entirely different professional background as a lawyer, which has no correlation with electronic engineering, which is the closest to telecommunications, the Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu has been advised to work with core information and communications technology (ICT) agencies like the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), as well as industry stakeholders, in order to succeed in his duties.

Stakeholders in the sector, who gave the advice were of the view that since he had no initial grasp of telecommunications, he must start learning how to climb the winding ropes fast enough, by opening his doors to core ICT professionals that could guide him to succeed.

National President of the Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Chief Adeolu Ogunbanjo, who expressed the views of the over 150 million telecoms subscribers, which he represents at the national level, said: “We take solace in the fact that the new minister will be working with of the likes of the Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Garba Danbatta; the Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr. Peter Jack; Secretary General/Chief Executive of the 54-Member nation Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), Mr. Shola Taylor, as well as other professionals and stakeholders.”

Ogunbanjo told THISDAY that subscribers would also want the minister to re-examine the N50 price cap regulation of the NCC since 2001 to date, and make efforts to reduce the price cap of N50 per minute, which he described as unrealistic and exploitative.

He called on the minister to revisit the issue of proposed merger between the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the NCC, to avoid overlapping of roles in today’s world of digital convergence.

“With your phone, you could make calls, watch videos and send messages, browse the internet, among others, and I do not see any reason why the past governments failed to merge the two government agencies, whose roles have already been collapsed by modern technology in the 21st century,” Ogunbanjo said, adding that the overall merger is for the benefit of government and Nigerians.

Worried about the issue of poor service quality across networks, Ogunbanjo said the minister must rise to address the issue to a conclusive end.

“The issue of poor service quality in the telecoms industry, with particular reference to the vexed issue of dropping/ breaking calls, undelivered but paid for text messages, data services deductions/internet poor quality, unauthorised call credit deductions, all without adequate reward and compensation, must stop,” ogunbanjo said.

He decried the blatant neglect of fixed and wired landlines services by telecoms operators who were supposed to offer the services, and called in Shittu to also look into it with a view to restoring land line operations in the country as it is currently being done in other parts of the world. “The issue of landline restoration must be a key policy focus of this administration; backed up by a lower level inter-connect rates. The current telecoms sector inter-connect rates, does not encourage the use of land lines,” Ogunbanjo added.

Subscribers were of the view that the new minister should ensure that he puts in place, Subscriber’s Compensation Policy Plan, which will compensate subscribers with free airtime, anytime telecoms operators perform below the Key Performance Indicators parameters (KPI) as set by the NCC.

“The current practice where telecoms operators fall short of KPI parameters and they are imposed huge fines, which goes to government coffers, is to say the least, highly exploitative and unsavory of the subscribers who suffer the pains and the brunt of poor quality service and other unauthorised deductions,” Ogunbanjo added.