The umbrella body of telecom companies, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Thursday raised alarm on the impending drastic changes coming if a number of states especially Kogi and the FCT fail to give listening ears to the operational challenges of its members.
Addressing members of the press in Lagos, Chairman of the group, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo expressed concern about some recent developments in the sector which cut across the following;
- SEIZURE OF CELLULAR SITES
- CONCERNS ABOUT DEGRADING QUALITY OF SERVICES AT THE
FCT
- HIGH COST OF ENERGY RISING COST OF SERVICE PROVISION
- SAFETY OF TELECOM WORKERS
SEIZURE OF SITES AND DEVELOPMENTS IN KOGI STATE
Continuing, he averred that “ALTON also express its concern about the shutting down of
telecommunications facilities in Kogi State because of disputes arising from
unusual taxes and levies demanded by the Kogi State Government through
the Kogi State Internal Revenue Service (KIRS).
The action by KIRS was hinged on an ex-parte court order obtained by the
KIRS over unsubstantiated allegations that our members are in default of tax payments to the state government (which is not the truth) and access to these critical telecom sites has been denied.
This issue is likely to lead to a total communications blackout in the entire Kogi State, parts of Abuja the Federal Capital Territory and possible impact on service availability in some parts of the following States: Nassarawa,
Benue, Enugu, Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, Niger States. These are States sharing borders with Kogi State.
As a result of these actions by the state government, our members are unable to refuel the power generators nor provide any support or maintenance services in these sites, a situation which has currently resulted in the outage of over 70 sites including hub sites across parts of Kogi State. The impact of these outages will gradually spread to the states mentioned above and if no action is taken within the next few days, a total outage of telecommunication sites in all these states will be catastrophically experienced.
We are very concerned that this indiscriminate action has the potential of further leading to a total telecommunications outage in Kogi State with neighboring states and parts of the Federal Capital Territory adversely impacted.
Adebayo added further that “To the best of our knowledge, our members have settled all statutory levies and taxes due to the Kogi State Government and have taken necessary steps to comply with local laws that govern business activities within Kogi State.
On the collapsing serviced quality in Abuja, ALTON noted that “The Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), office of the Director for Signage & Advertisement has refused to grant telecommunication Service Providers permit to build infrastructure in the Federal capital city. This is affecting the quality of services around FCT and Abuja. The problem is created by the governing authority in the FCT. Telecommunications services drive on the terrestrial infrastructure. We hereby call on the Federal Executive Council to prevail on the FCDA in granting approval/permit to our members to deploy infrastructure.
ALTON and its members will no longer tolerate discriminatory charges against the sector. The industry is planning to begin a study on varying tariff to some of the unfriendly telecommunications States in other to accommodate their demand. Those States that are requesting for nonstatutory levies and taxes are the one being subsidized by some viable States.
HIGH COST OF ENERGY RISING COST OF SERVICE PROVISION SAFETY OF TELECOM WORKERS
We want to be clear and state categorically that the action by Kogi and FCDA will not only jeopardize communication services provided by our members to the Nigerian subscribers, but will have the greater effect of negatively impacting the use of critical communication infrastructure by our National and State security agencies in the discharge of their duties to provide necessary security for the country, especially in these trying times, when communication across states should be uninterrupted and seamless.
It is also important to note that the work of Government, Experience of visitors economies of these states which will be affected by the anticipated outage as other emergency, social, commercial and banking services in FCT/ KOGI and neighboring states who rely on our members deployed communication infrastructure will be negatively impacted and outage. This will include affecting communication links to Government Offices, Security
Agencies, Financial Institutions, Oil and Gas and so many others will be affected.
We will like to further state that the office of the National Security Adviser had communicated to the 36 state governments and emphasized that telecommunications sites are Critical National and security Infrastructure.
They are critical socio-economic and security infrastructure. ONSA in that communication strongly advised against sealing them or preventing capacity expansion as low capacity and outages arising from such actions will have negative implications on national security imperatives.
ALTON further recalled that “State Governments were directed to explore other means of resolving tax related disputes, and must not resort to the sealing of telecommunications sites. It is therefore worrisome, the actions of Kogi State Government in particular and the FCDA authorities continue to ignore such advice, and have unabashedly commenced the sealing of our members’ base stations
Our members have also made several overtures to Kogi State Internal Revenue Service KIRS in the past months in a bid to resolve the disputed issues amicably but the agency has remained adamant. Rather than resort to the Tax Arbitration Tribunal for intervention as is expected of a government agency, KIRS has resorted to subtle intimidation by getting the sites shutdown in a bid to coerce our members into accepting the illegal taxes and
levies.
HIGH COST OF ENERGY AND SECURITY OF TELECOM
WORKERS
We are very concerned about the rising cost of diesel and its implications on the general high cost of business.
We are concerned that unless there is an intervention to safe this sector, operators will have no choice than to begin a process of price review.
The state of security on our country is of concern, whole we commend all our security agencies for the work they do to keep us all safe, the impact of the general state of security on the country is that we are not able to provide 24/7 support in certain areas as it is unsafe to send out service personnel to some parts of the country and to other at certain times of the day.
We join in the call to Government to do a lot more to keep the nation safe and keep our worker safe.
However, ALTON chairman reassured the commitment of its members in working with the security agencies in order the necessary support for national security for which we now need protection from sub-national government and agencies to stop the interference of smooth operations of telecom services.
