From David Onuoja, Abuja
The Senate on Wednesday, ordered an investigation into an alleged arbitrary airtime deductions by telecommunications operators for failed, dropped and prematurely terminated calls.
The Senate gave its Committee on Communications, four weeks to establish the financial losses suffered by subscribers and report back with recommendations for further legislative and regulatory action.
The resolution followed a motion on consumer protection in the telecommunications sector, which highlighted persistent complaints by Nigerians over deductions for calls that fail to connect, terminate abruptly or are disrupted by poor network services.
The motion was sponsored by the Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Tahir Monguno, and presented by the Deputy Senate Leader. It was seconded by Senator Ned Nwoko, representing Delta North, who described the problem as one affecting virtually every telecommunication subscriber in the country.
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Supporting the motion, Nwoko said the proposed investigation was necessary to protect consumers from avoidable financial losses arising from poor service delivery by network operators.
“This is a well-thought-out motion. It is very straightforward. It is all about consumer protection. We need to make this particular motion at this critical time because a lot of the time, everybody is involved in the use of calls, making calls across the country, and we all experience the same technical issues,” he said.
However, during consideration of the prayers, the Deputy Minority Leader proposed that the Senate adopt only Prayer Six, arguing that it sufficiently captured the issues raised in the preceding five prayers. The amendment, which was seconded by Senator Benios Yaro, representing Adamawa South, was subsequently put to a voice vote by the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and adopted.
Reading the resolution, Akpabio said the Committee on Communications had been directed to invite the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and relevant telecommunications operators to investigate complaints concerning failed calls, dropped calls, unterminated calls and inflated charges.
The consolidated resolution brings under one investigation several proposals seeking an inquiry into the billing practices of MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel and T2 Mobile; the establishment of an accessible complaints and redress mechanism; automatic refunds for verifiably failed calls; independent technical audits of billing systems; and stricter enforcement of quality-of-service standards.
Speaking after the adoption, Akpabio urged the Committee on Communications, to commence work immediately, describing the four-week deadline as lengthy but necessary.
He warned that the Senate could take over the investigation as a Committee of the Whole if the committee failed to submit a satisfactory report within the stipulated period.
“I think we should; we have given them a timeline of four weeks. Four weeks is too long, but we can allow it. If in four weeks they don’t satisfy us, then we have to take it as a Committee of the Whole and invite all the operators, in addition to the Minister overseeing the NCC and also the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, to ask these pertinent questions,” he said.
The Senate President said the growing complaints from subscribers could no longer be ignored, particularly as consumers continued to lose money over services that were either poorly delivered or not provided at all.
He stressed the need to engage the NCC, the supervising minister and operators to ensure accountability, determine the extent of losses, and identify possible gaps in enforcement of consumer protection rules.
