From Cyriacus Nnaji, Lagos
Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has raised concerns over the state of affairs in the Telecommunications industry, among which was the Seizure of Cellular Sites in Kogi State.
Other issues raised include Concerns about degrading quality of services at the FCT, High cost of energy, rising cost of service provision; safety of telecoms, among others.
ALTON has also sent seven days’ warning for government to address their complaints.
ALTON made the disclosures at a press conference which took place at the association’s office in Victoria Island, Lagos on Thursday, March 31, 2022.
The Chairman, Engr Gbenga Adebayo expressed the organization’s 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).
He said “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,” Adebayo stated.
He said the impact of the 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. 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.”
Adebayo also raised Concerns about degrading quality of services at the FCT, adding that the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), office of the Director for Signage and Advertisement has refused to grant telecommunication Service Providers permit to build infrastructure in the Federal capital city. This, he said, 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 non-statutory levies and taxes are the one being subsidized by some viable States.”
Speaking on high cost of energy, he said “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.”
He said as an industry, and as citizens of this country, “we are concerned about the wider implications of the action of the KIRS, we hereby call on His Excellency, The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who is driving the Presidential Enabling Business Council on Ease of doing business in Nigeria, and the ONSA, to prevail on the FCDA authorizes and Kogi State Governor His Excellency, Yahaya Bello (a Presidential Aspirant) to as a matter of urgency bring his authority to bear on KIRS so as to prevent a total blackout in communications services in FCT, Kogi, and by extension other neighboring States of the Federation which are now under threat due to the progressive degradation in quality of services outages happening to our members capacity extension and seizure of base stations in Kogi State.
ALTO also issued seven days warning, after which the group will take any necessary action to draw the attention of government to its complaints.
