Subscribers’ seek sack of Minister over shifting of sanctions responsibility to Nigerians
Many angry Nigerians subscribers who have been experiencing impaired Quality of Service (QoS) have reacted to a statement issued by the Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu urging Nigerians to join hands with the Federal Ministry of Communications and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in the fight against poor quality services, unsolicited sms and unauthorized deductions by telecom service operators in the country.
Many of them who spoke to Business Hilights said they have made uncountable presentations on the poor services rendered by networks to the relevant authorities and nothing came out of it.
To them, for the minister to ask subscribers to join hands in fighting the networks means that he has lost touch of his ministerial responsibilities in the industry and therefore should be removed in the next cabinet shakeup.
Some of them recalled that shortly after assuming office, the minister opened up saying he has no background or fair knowledge of the industry.
In the press statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Victor Oluwadamilare, upon which subscribers were responding, the statement claimed that the Minister frowned at the substitution of name calling for good argumentation on the need for all hands to be on deck to checkmate the unwholesome and obvious detestable conduct of operators in the area of poor quality service, unsolicited messages and outright extortion.
“The social media should be put to more productive use in such a way to project the country well in the comity of nations and proffer enduring solutions to tame the monstrosity of epileptic services by telecom operators”, he quipped.
The Minister said that Nigerians have the right to complain about unsavory services they experienced in recent times from telecoms operators, but assured them that the Ministry is not folding its hands or shying away from its responsibility of ensuring that normalcy prevails in the industry, adding that the Ministry always put regulatory agencies on their toes to do the needful.
Rather than casting aspersions on the Ministry and the NCC for improper monitoring or not penalizing telecom operators by infuriated Nigerians, he said people should understand the workings of government and in turn appreciate the efforts of the regulators in ensuring that consumers enjoyed value for their money.
Issues discussed among others include extortion of Nigerian subscribers by telecom operators, incessant dropped calls on all networks, QoS, dead or silent calls and call tariff plans. Others are deficiency in data penetration, roll out of 4G/LTE network, under-declared revenue and profit by telecom operators, disengagement of Nigerian taxpaying employees by telecom operators through outsourcing to foreign companies and discrepancy and discrimination against Nigerian employees by telecom operators.
“In as much as I’m not holding brief for the telecoms regulatory agency, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), I know as a matter of fact many positive steps the Ministry in conjunction with the NCC have taken in the last one year to stem the tide of most of the subscribers’ complaints”, adding that the innuendoes to the effect that the Ministry and the NCC have been compromised, indolent and not capable of rescuing the Nigerian masses is far from the truth.
“While it may be a sad truism that poor quality service, extortion and other malfeasances by operators might have led to misconceptions and somewhat destroyed family ties, it will be wrong to use the social media to disparage genuine efforts of the Ministry and the NCC to beat the offending operators to line.
‘’What we required is complementary support of the Nigerian people in achieving an enduring quality service that will be a pride of all and promote the nation’s economy”, Barr. Shittu added.
The NCC, he said, has made the consumer the focus of its regulatory activities which explains the proactive approach the current management of the Commission has towards issues that affect the consumer and on a large scale the entire industry.
