The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says it will now hold telecommunications service providers accountable for poor service delivery to customers.
The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr Aminu Maida, gave the warning at a breakfast meeting with journalists in Abuja as he unveiled the five drivers of his administration: training, capacity-building compliance, data drive, digitization, and collaboration.
Maida said the Commission will hold telecom service providers accountable as consumers pay for these services and service providers must meet their minimal expectations.
“You are going to see a change in the way we make decisions; we are going to be very data-driven. All our decisions are going to be backed up by data as much as possible. We want to reduce subjectiveness and make the right decisions that will improve the industry.
“When there is regulation without any consequences or enforcements on obligations, you will agree with me that those obligations’ chances of being met are very low, so as we drive towards delivering an optimal quality of experience for our customers.
“We intend to hold our licensees accountable for all services; after all, consumers pay for the services, and they expect the service to be at a certain level or point.
“Last week I spoke about compliance and enforcement but we will also first of all be collaborators; we will place a very high premium on collaboration with all critical stakeholders, including yourselves, to ensure that everybody is carried along in a cooperative process so that we can try to create win-win scenarios for everybody but of course if that is not possible, all the licensees have an obligation and we will not be shy to enforce for the clients.”
Maida said the Commission will focus on the three critical stakeholders—consumers, the government, licences, and the industry—to ensure the growth of the sector.
“The commission also will be driven by their recognition that we have primarily Three critical stakeholders in the industry these are the consumers of telecom services, the industry and the licensees. And the topmost are the Internet service providers, submarine landed cable companies, all of the licensees of the commission and last but not least, the government.”
According to Maida, the Commission recognises that each of these stakeholders has a unique perspective and has different expectations. Our approach will thus walk towards the expectations of these stakeholders and everything else.
The NCC boss gave the assurance that the top priority of the government is to ensure the quality of service, which is fundamental and paramount for consumer experiences of all telecom services.
“For me, the expectation of the consumer is very simple: quality of service. I don’t think you can say anything more than that quality of service and this quality of service we are talking about is a total consumer experience.”
Speaking on the collaboration between industry players, he said the Commission has resolved the issue between two major players and that the NCC will soon state that effect.
“The issues between two of the top big operators, which hopefully sometime today or tomorrow we will be making a press release to let Nigerians and other stakeholders know that the two titans, thus we played the role of mediator and sat down between themselves and resolved their issues… happily.
“We are going to be putting in measures to ensure they don’t get to that stage again. And like I said, we need to foster collaboration before we get to compliance and enforcement. And for our licensees the commission is committed to making life easier for them, so we are going to be doing a lot of advocacy,“ he added.