By Chibuike Nwabuko
Minister of Communications Mr. Adebayo shittu has tasked Nigerians to team up with his ministry in its ongoing fight against poor quality services, unsolicited SMSand unauthorized deduction by telecommunication service providers in the country.
In a statement issued by Victor Oluwadamilare his Special Assistant on Media on Wednesday, 8th March 2017, Shittu condemned the on- going blame game, and said that this is the time for all hands to be on deck to checkmate the unwholesome and obvious detestable conduct of operators in the area of poor quality service, unsolicited messages and outright extortion.
According to the minister, ‘’The social media should be put to more productive use in such a way to project the country well in the comity of nations and proffer enduring solutions to tame the monstrosity of epileptic services by telecom operators”.
He commended and admitted that positive steps have been taken by the telecom regulators in the past one year to stem the tide of most of the subscribers complaints.
“While it may be a sad truism that poor quality service, extortion and other malfeasances by operators might have led to misconceptions and somewhat destroyed family ties, it will be wrong to use the social media to disparage genuine efforts of the Ministry and the NCC to beat the offending operators to line.
‘’What we required is complementary support of the Nigerian people in achieving an enduring quality service that will be a pride of all and promote the nation’s economy”, Shittu added.
As part of his commitment to ensure quality telecom service, the Minster listed the offences of telecom operators in the country to include; extortion of Nigerian Subscribers, incessant dropped calls on all networks, poor quality of service, dead or silent calls and call tariff plans. Others are deficiency in data penetration, roll out of 4G/LTE network, under-declared revenue and profit by telecom operators, disengagement of Nigerian tax paying employees by telecom operators through outsourcing to foreign companies and discrepancy and discrimination against Nigerian Employees By telecom operators.
Shittu said rather than continuing to insinuate that there is corruption everywhere, subscribers should stop being complacent, and be alive to their responsibilities as discernible consumers by being proactive and possibly sue erring operator where a prima facie case could be established.