Let me once again refresh your minds about the Nigerian Communications Commission. We are the independent regulator of telecommunications services in Nigeria. Part of our responsibilities is to ensure that you enjoy quality of services being offered by the telecom service providers in Nigeria. It is also our duty to ensure that you have a choice in the competitive market of telecom services provisioning in the country, and that you the consumer, enjoys value for your money.

To ensure sustenance of the service that you enjoy, we are also responsible for the protection of the consumer against any unfair practices just as it is our responsibility to ensure that service providers are not hindered in the line of the provision of the services.

When you look at some of these responsibilities, you would easily notice that most of our activities or responsibilities revolve around the consumers, more than our other stakeholders like government, the media, the service providers, investors, among others. That was what prompted the Commission to establish a full-fledged Department called Consumer Affairs Bureau, CAB. This department was created several years ago to undertake every issue concerning the welfare of the consumer in the provision of telecommunications services in the country.

You may be aware that consumer satisfaction is one of the provisions in the 8-Points Agenda of my administration.  This is a way to reiterate our commitment in the advancement of consumer protection and to show our sincerity of purpose in promoting those ideals which are of paramount importance and of interest to the consumers in the telecom sector.

This department is currently attending to customers in our Pavilion at the Trade Fair Ground, and I implore you to spare some time and visit to resolve any complaints, or even witness how we attend to customers. You may also get some relevant information that you may find useful for uninterrupted use of your phone services.

One of the major reasons why we attend events like trade fairs such as this one is to take advantage of a good gathering of consumers to further engage them, and also hear them out regarding their services. This type of engagement, just like we do with several consumer outreaches in the country, has enabled us to come up with solutions to some of the complaints arising from the use of telecommunications services in the country. You may have heard about the Telecom Consumer Parliament, Telecom Consumer Outreach, and Consumer Town Hall meetings. These are platforms that we have designed for consumer engagement and we take these activities round the country to ensure that consumers across the country have opportunity to interact, face to face, with the service providers, in the presence of the regulator, and to find a common ground in the promotion of consumer interests.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, for any society, there is a rule of engagement with one another. When we talk about consumer interests, we also speak about consumer responsibilities. There are several responsibilities of the consumer, which we must not fail to discuss today.  Prelude to this discussion, we have in the course of the regulation of the industry, ensured transparency and openness in all that we do, which is why we are very proud to come to interact with the consumers and members of the public.  That is why we  expect the consumers and members of the public to also embrace our disposition by assisting the Commission to eradicate some fraudulent activities that exist in the industry, especially those ones that are within their purview of support.

We are saying this today with regard to some instances of use of pre-registered SIM Cards in the country. By our regulation, any new number acquired by the subscriber, would be unable to originate calls until such number is registered before it is activated in the network. It also means that any number that is not registered or activated by the service provider would remain inactive in the network. However, we have a situation where some unscrupulous individuals engage in registering and activating huge number of lines with fraudulent identities with a view to selling them to unwary subscribers who are too busy or too ignorant to understand that they need to have their identities behind their numbers. In some cases, those who engage in these activities are trying to hide their real identities for the purpose of using such lines to perpetrate criminal activities in the society.

We are using this opportunity to inform consumers, and members of the public to alert security agencies where they find anybody engaging in the sale, or use of preregistered SIM cards, as they pose a serious danger to our individual and collective safety. Those found culpable also risk severe penalties of fine and imprisonment.  We have also sent serious warnings to the service providers to ensure that their dealers and sub-dealers, who have a role to play in the sale and activation of services, are not culpable in the perpetration of this crime. Our Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Department is currently going round the country with a view to fishing out the perpetrators.

On another note, you may have seen that as we advance in technologies and as more devices are being introduced into the market, some of these devices have been used and dropped in other parts of the world, and some may not even meet with international benchmarks for safety.  We urge you to ensure that devices being used are type-approved by the NCC and list of such devices are available in our website.  Substandard devices are capable of degrading the quality of services available in the networks and also pose serious safety issues to users.

We shall not relent in speaking about vandalization, or willful disruption of telecommunications services. These activities have not helped in the improvement of quality of services in the network. Also, stoppage or obstruction of service providers from deployment of equipment or maintenance at the base stations further degrades quality of services. Activities of local governments, landlords and communities, sometimes contribute to degradation of services as they refuse right of way to the service providers. We urge you to carry this information to our neighbours and communities to the effect that we have a very sensitive network where disruption of service in a location can affect services beyond that location and to far-flung areas. These are some of the factors that contribute to poor quality of service, which the Commission is working hard to improve.

We also hope that consumers are taking advantage of a number of solutions, which the Commission have evolved to improve the quality of experience of subscribers in the network.  The latest of such solution is the Do-Not-Disturb Code, 2442, launched by the Commission, to combat the menace of unsolicited text messages. The power to receive, or reject any text message is now in the hands of the consumer. All the service providers have been mandate to implement and educate consumers on how to restrict those message sand voice calls that are considered unsolicited.

Porting of lines where the consumer is not satisfied with his or her network provider but still desires to keep his or her number while obtaining services from other service providers is still in place.  At the moment, the rules have been reviewed such that if you port to another network and still remain unsatisfied, you can port back,  or port to yet another network within 45 days of initial porting, against the initial provision of 90 days.

We are also urging the consumers to utilize the platform that we have provided for resolution of complaints, by calling on our toll free number 622. We observed that most subscribers do not think that they would have solutions to their complaints but the good news is that more than 75 per cent of complaints lodged on this platform are resolved, immediately and the remainders escalated for resolution. However, we need to understand that the service provider is the first port of call. It is when the service provider fails, that such complaints should be reported to 622.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we will continue to tow the path of progress in our telecommunications regulation, and we must report that our overall performance had continued to impress even in a time of difficult economic situations such as we have today. As at September 2016,  the number of active subscribers in the network is more than 153 Million. Teledesity, which is measured as One telephone to 100 of population is above 109%. Internet penetration has continued to rise with more than 97 million.

These are to show that the telecom industry will continue to add value to our lives and to our economy.  A lot of spin offs and solutions are now available with the nations’ telecom environment. Internet banking and online bookings are prevalent. The Nigerian social media is alive and thriving. We have a full dose of social media interactions going on across the length and breadth of Nigeria. With our current efforts towards broadband deployments, we hope that the industry will continue to improve until we achieve full availability, accessibility, and affordability for all.

On this note, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for being part of NCC Day at the 2016 Lagos International Trade Fair. We extend our sincere regards to LACCIMA and promise to continue to partner with them in providing a very good platform for telecom consumer interactions in the future.

SPEECH OF THE EXECCUTIVE VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE NIGERIAN COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, NCC, PROFESSOR UMAR GARBA DANBATTA,FNSE, ON THE OCCASION OF THE NCC DAY AT THE 2016 LAGOS INTERNATIONAL TRADE FAIR IN LAGOS ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2016.