By Felix Ugboja
ABUJA (Sundiata Post) The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has held a stakeholders engagement meeting with relevant state agencies in charge of telecommunications matters.
The meeting with the theme ‘’Optimising the Benefits of Telecoms Infrastructure in Nigeria,’’ held on Tuesday at NAF Conference Centre, Abuja, and was well attended by telecom industry leaders and stakeholders from across the country.
One of the dominant issues of discourse during the meeting was that of multiple taxation problems in Nigeria faced by telecom companies. Other issues talked about include that of the need to bridge the access gaps in Nigeria and the successful reduction of the rights of way charges.
In his opening remarks, the Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management, NCC, Mr. Sunday Dare stated that the NCC has done a lot up to this point, and the fact that the meeting was being convened shows that an appreciable progress has been made.
‘’I can say we are on the last lap and are looking at three key things: Harmonisation of the multiple taxation; Multiple regulation – we want to develop a typology of the taxes being charged. Right now we have about 45 to 47 different taxes. We need to develop a typology that will bring them to about a range of 10 or 12, agreeable to all the states; we also want to look at the range of taxes that are paid, whether it is between 5000 and 10000, not 5000 and 45000.
‘’We have had conversations and consultations along the way. We have met with the Governor’s forum, National Executive Council, and other stakeholders. We thought that as a final assembly, we needed to bring all those in charge from all the states to have this conversation,’’ he said.
Speaking on cyber security, he stated that they NCC currently have a bit of refuge in the cyber security act of 2014, domiciled in the office of the NSA, which covers not just telecom infrastructure but also gas and oil pipelines and other critical national infrastructures. ‘’But we still want to have the CNI bill which will be totally encompassing,’’ he added.
The NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta in his keynote address revealed that the reduction in rights of way has been secured and captured in the national economic report that specifies what should be charged for deployment of information and communications infrastructure in any part of the country.
‘’We now have a harmonised rate which must be respected by state and local governments demanding taxes from telecos. So we are very happy about that meeting where the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo and the Governors were in attendance and reached a resolution where we witnessed the harmonisation of the rates from the arbitrary amounts that were being charged before to the amount captured in the report which is N145 per meter length of fibre deployment, minus any repairs that could occur in the process of deployment. Governors have given their assurances to respect this,’’ he said.
As for the access gap issues, Prof. Danbatta stated that the commission has a map detailing where the gaps are. The next thing, he said, is how to bridge the gap which is affecting about 40 million Nigerians who cannot enjoy telecom services. At the current bridging rate of 10 gaps per annum, it will take 20 years to bridge the gap, but he said the NCC are interested in technology solutions that will enable them bridge the gap faster, and they have found that technology he said, which has been tried in three locations and are very satisfied. If deployed massively, it can bridge the gap in about 2 to 3 years, he said.
Other speakers at the event like Mr. Paul Usoro, SAN, further stressed the need to resolve the multiple tax problems where some ministries, departments and agencies have different names for the same tax.
Prof. Abiola Sanni, a tax consultant also stated that the major problem that needs to be resolved is the abuse of regulatory power by the relevant agencies.