By Stanley Nwanosike
Enugu – A don, Dr Nathaniel Urama, has identified multiple taxation and erratic power supply as bane of telecommunication companies in the country.
Urama, a lecturer at the Department of Economics, University of Nigeria (UNN), made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Enugu.
He said the negative development had made the telecom sector unable to meet the expected economic impact and growth.
Urama, who is also a lead researcher with African Heritage Institution (Afri-Heritage), noted that a recent research he conducted in the sector exposed the difficult terrain that telecom companies work and survive under.
“The issue of multiple taxation can be seen in the telecom industry, especially in any spot they mount their telecom mask.
“You cannot imagine that telecom companies have to pay at least three taxes; first, they pay the statutory and normal tax to the Federal Government.
“It will not be long, the state revenue agents will come around threatening to shut down the base.
“After resting from that; the local government authorities will show up at the same base for some settlement.
“Then, lastly, the local youths, who are most times violent in nature, will come to demand for some monetary settlement before they allow the base and its engineers to be.
“All these settlements have made it impossible for telecom companies to spread their mast and allow for more penetration of their services, especially internet, which should bridge the gap between the knowledge of the rural and urban people,’’ he said.
According to him, access to internet is the only way forward to easily achieve even development and spread of knowledge in the country.
On power supply, the economist noted that electricity remained the cheapest and most durable form of power supply, which telecom companies could leverage on to better their services to the people.
“Then they run their mast bases and other installations that aid their services on generating sets for days. The business becomes difficult for them to make profit and pay their workers and other suppliers,’’ he said.
(NAN)
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