Regulating the telecoms sector of Nigeria is an enormous task and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is probably one of the busiest regulatory bodies in the world, responsible for the communications services provided by the various operators to more than a hundred million subscribers.
The current impasse on the issue of SIM card registration however, shows the NCC is underperforming and needs to start taking decisive action if it wants to be taken seriously.
While the NCC has directed all unregistered lines to be disconnected and not reconnected following the expiration of the grace period it gave subscribers to register their lines, the networks have been witnessed reconnecting the unregistered lines.
The subscribers too are seeing the NCC as unable to see it projects through, unable to enforce simple directives which is why on various social media platforms, several subscribers taunted the regulatory body and dared it to disconnect their unregistered lines.
The current perception of the NCC by the networks, subscribers and other stakeholders really does spell doom for the sector in Nigeria.
The operators will not improve the quality of the services they are providing for their subscribers when they know that they can get away with any wrongdoing.
But if the NCC is alert to its duties, the companies will know they have to improve their service quality one way or another.
It also needs to address the controversies and inconsistencies in its official positions.
A recent depiction was the controversial window it said it had opened to allow unregistered and disconnected users to reclaim their lines after it vowed not to reconnect such lines.
The same day some media houses published the rumour, an executive of the NCC in Abuja said the commission is not going back on its decision not to reconnect disconnected lines.
Subscribers in Nigeria publicly laugh at the shameful one-step-forward-several-steps-backward actions of the commission, while the networks secretly applaud the confusion in the system since it guarantees they can continue to have their way and post billions of dollars in annual profit, even when they ought to be kicked out of the country as a result of the disservice they call mobile networks.
