Sola Salako, President of the Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON), believes subscribers of Nigerian telecoms companies are the biggest losers by the ongoing ban placed on network’s offering promotions and lotteries by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
She said the NCC’s ban can only be justified if the commission could convincingly prove that the promos and lotteries were directly responsible for the poor quality of telecoms services.
“[The ban] will only be justified if there is proof that consumer promotions and lotteries are the reasons for the poor quality of service in the telecoms sector. NCC has not been able to establish that connection yet because two months into the ban, service is worse than what it was before the ban.
“Therefore, until NCC is able to establish that there is a direct correlation between the consumer promotions and lotteries on the networks and the quality of service, the ban will be considered unjustified,” she told This Day.
In a related development, the NCC has expressed its readiness to remove the ban it placed on lotteries. However, Eugene Juwah, Executive Vice Chairman, said only the telecoms companies who have met the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) will be allowed to commence their lotteries and promos.
“We are carrying out measurements and when we finish, we will see the service providers that are meeting our thresholds. The operators who meet our thresholds well, we will lift the ban on them, for the ones that do not meet the thresholds, the ban will still stay,’’ Juwah said.
Experts are however pessimistic about the ability of the nation’s major telecoms companies to pass the quality test as a result of the protracted depreciation in the quality of their services.
