Nnamdi Nwokike, the Director of Public Affairs, NCC

Mr Nnamdi Nwokike, the Director of Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said on Sunday that the commission received 118,784 service-related complaints from aggrieved telecom consumers in the last two years.

Nwokike made the disclosure in a statement on Sunday in Abuja, adding that 92,757 of the complaints were successfully treated and resolved.

He said that the information was part of the report by Alhaji Ismail Adedigba, the Deputy Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau, on the commission’s consumer protection activities during a consumer awareness campaign held in Niger state recently.

Nwokike stated, “Between January 2017 and December 2018, the commission received a total of 118,784 complaints from consumers. 92,757, representing 78 per cent of the total complaints received during the two years period were successfully resolved to the satisfaction of telecom consumers,” he said.

He further quoted the report to have also stated that 5,010 appreciations were received from consumers, who expressed satisfaction with the handling of their cases by the commission.

He said that while some consumers wrote formally, others called personally to express their gratitude to the commission for its efforts.

Nwokike said the consumer’s feedback came through the NCC toll-free Line – 622, the NCC Consumer Portal, consumer complaint redress email and written complaints. Other channels were the social media platform, consumer town hall meetings, consumer outreach programme and telecom consumer parliament.

He said that no fewer than 31, 202 consumers were engaged face-to-face through the three consumer outreach programmes held across the states of the federation on a rotational basis and that participants at the programmes were adequately educated on their rights and privileges, with respect to the provision of telecom services within the last two years.

He added that consumer fact sheets developed by the commission on various service-related and topical issues were also distributed at such fora to educate consumers on various issues in the industry and the commission placed a lot of importance on consumer-related issues, hence it initiated programmes aimed at enlightening and protecting the consumers.

He said that the essence was to ensure that consumers got quality services and value for the money they spent on telecom services, be it voice or data.

“Also, we ensure that we embark on initiatives aimed at providing wider service options and also put more control in the hands of the consumers to determine what they receive, especially in terms of value-added services. This is  in line with our mandate of protecting, informing and educating the consumers,” he said.

He said that the commission created the ‘Do-Not-Disturb (DND) 2442 Short Code’ in 2016, as part of measures to put more control in the hands of consumers to determine what they received on their mobile lines.
Nwokike also said that no fewer than 12 million telecom consumers have activated DND code, according to the report.

“As a commission, we shall continue to create more awareness on DND in order for consumers to have control over the kind of unsolicited text messages they receive. We expect that this number will continue to grow as more consumers become aware of the DND Short Code through continuous awareness campaigns,” he said.