Communications respite will soon come the way of residents in the troubled North East following the dislodging of insurgents by the Nigerian forces. The development is therefore encouraging several telecoms tower operators to commence the rebuilding of destroyed towers and other facilities.
It would be recalled that within the trying periods of the zone, statistics show that over 150 towers were destroyed and abandoned by Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) who then was the owners of those towers, but today, they are now owned and are being rebuild by telecommunications infrastructure providers.
Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Engineer Gbenga Adebayo disclosed in an interview that operators have started rebuilding some of the towers Boko Haram terrorist group destroyed in the height of the insurgency in the Northeast.
He said “Security in some areas has improved which necessitate the rebuilding and access to cell sites has also improved with no threat to abandoning of cell sites again.”
He decried lack of insurance cover for terrorism, saying “operators are funding the rebuilding of these destroyed base transceiver station (BTS) as there are no insurance cover for terrorism destroyed properties or infrastructure in Nigeria”.
“To this end that we are asking the federal government to give operators as a support is concession in the areas of tax rebate to mitigate the huge financial burden on operators for the rebuilding of the towers destroyed for no fault of theirs. A lot of badly destroyed cell sites are not among the ones being rebuilt presently.
An insurance expert, Mr. Ken Obaro told journalists that he is currently advocating for the creation of Terror related insurance cover to serve as a buffer for some businesses as it is in other volatile countries of the world like Iraq and Afghanistan.
