Daily Independent (Lagos)
Aaron Ukodie
12 January 2009
There is no doubt that the new Minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili, has high marks as the Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
A plethora of accolades and awards from within and outside were heaped on her on account of her sterling performance at the agency where she pursued fake drug dealers, confiscated their wares and burnt them in public glare.
As NAFDAC DG where she held the position of a regulator under the supervision of the Minister of Health whose duty was strictly to enunciate policies for Akunyili to execute, she was hardly flawed.
In fact, she enjoyed the media. Her role as a regulator was properly delineated for her, which she carried out without infractions on the policy portfolio.
But many who attended the first stakeholders' meeting held at the Press Centre at Radio House, Abuja called by the minister expressed apprehension on the first steps, the minister referred to by her admirer as iron lady, took.
Their observations were that the minister conducted herself as if she was the regulator, reeling out regulatory orders while in that moment, forgetting the limits of her functions as policy maker as enunciated in the Telecoms Act of 2003.
President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, who was at the Abuja meeting, said the phenomenon represented the industry views as thus: "Ielecommunications regulation falls within the NCC. The ministry should not co-regulate the industry so that there is order, harmony, cohesiveness, transparency, peace, where there is proper definition. We hope the NCC will brief the minister more properly".
MTN Corporate Executive, Wale Goodluck, also expressed the same worry when he said "the NCC is the regulator while the minister is in charge of policy."
Ekuwem particularly made reference to Akunyili's order to the NCC to collect statistics on dropped call rates and other quality of service parameters on weekly basis to determine the performance of operators.
"This report should be properly analysed and made available to the office of the minister on regular basis. We shall use these reports to assess operators to know those that are living up to the expectations of Nigerians," she said.
He, however, sympathised with the minister whom he said needs time to debrief herself of her previous role as regulator and come to terms with her new role as policy maker.
Also of concern to industry watchers was the minister's intolerance with views that were expressed at the meeting, which sought to remind her of the achievements of the telecommunications sector and how the industry was bracing for the challenges that still beset it.
She took exceptions to such comments when they were made by the Chief Executive Officer of Zain, Bayo Ligali, describing them as political talks, but was warm to those who knocked the industry and called her to save the Nigerian masses from what they referred to as its excesses.
Ligali, who was responding to the minister's address to the stakeholders, made references to the laudable achievements of the industry since 2001 and the various steps being taken to tackle the challenges that still beset the sector. For instance, Ligali said the level of quality of service improved during the 2008 Christmas and New Year celebrations was in contrast to the situation in 2007.
He said the improvement was a result of the industry's commitment to tackle quality of service challenges through improvement in network capacity roll out and purchase of more generating sets.
And Ligali is the Zain boss in Nigeria and not a roadside fake drugs peddler.
There was obviously some embarrassment in the air, but not among the crowd. Not so many CEOs were enthusiastic to contribute any more except those who would first plead that they were no politicians before making a few contributions.
Her demand for tariff to be reviewed downwards didn't elicit any promise from the operators, who obviously knew better. Tariff cannot be legislated by fiat. It is a business decision that involves so many parties - operators, regulators and the international community. Such decision couldn't be taken at the spur of the moment and the minister needed to be advised accordingly.
On fixed lines, the minister said: "There should be deployment of more Fixed lines into our telecommunications system. Nigeria currently has about 55-60million active telephone subscribers and over 90 per cent of them are mobile phone users. This is not the case in other countries. More fixed lines should be deployed in the system in order to derive its full benefit of fixed, stable, clearer, safer and cheaper calls."
The story of Nitel and the failure of government to sell the ailing octopus after several failed attempts, paint a clearer picture of happenings in the fixed sector. While most developed countries including the developing ones like Egypt and South Africa got it right by laying fibre optic cables and rolling out fixed lines for their people, Nitel was caught in the vortex of politics and 'Father Christmas' attitude. Most contracts in the organisation were 'favours to friends'. This is pay back time. Nitel is down and there is no help coming its way and the minister wants fixed lines to be rolled out!
A few people expressed some concerns last week that the minister needs to be properly briefed about the industry, which is obviously very new to her and be prepared to engage the operators much more discreetly instead of speaking very poorly about them. Some experts stressed that the industry may not be perfect, but it remains one of the sectors currently working in the country.
The Abuja meeting held under a very rowdy session witnessed free comments made by representatives of market women and non-governmental organisations, who had the floor to applaud the performance of Akunyili as NAFDAC Director-General and denigrate the work being done in the telecom sector.
ICT journalists that wanted to ask questions were denied. Only two persons, who claimed to be journalists, one who did not specify the organisation he works for and another who said she works for a magazine called *****WomanToday*****, were allowed to ask questions.
There were also many at the meeting who sought to obliterate the achievements of the telecom sector.
Speakers such as Prof. Augustine Odimma also sought to puncture the NCC's yardstick for measuring teledensity, which he claimed was faulty. In his view, Nigeria's teledensity is not up to 42 per cent as indicated by the regulator because many Nigerians carry more than one handset. Another speaker also argued that NCC was wrong in using mobile figures for measuring teledensity as against fixed lines, which he claimed was the international practice.
In his reaction to these claims, Executive Vice-Chairman of the NCC, Ernest Ndukwe, said both speakers were wrong and were not in tune with current trends in the international field.
He said the Nigerian practice aligns with International Telecommunications Union (ITU) practice, which uses both fixed and mobile phone figures to measure teledensity and the ITU does not.
In fact, Ndukwe took the microphone to speak on these issues, a section of the hall made efforts to shout him down. It took the intervention of the Master of Ceremony before he was allowed to speak.
Akunyili said though the cost of mobile services in Nigeria may not be the most expensive in Africa, it ought to be amongst the cheapest considering Nigeria's large population and huge demand for communications. The minister, who said there are only very few liberalised countries in Africa with higher tariffs than what obtains within Nigeria sought to extract a 'promise from the operators that they will reduce tariff'.
Also, last Thursday Akunyili got the first reality check as members of the House of Representatives rejected her 2009 Budget, asking her to put her house in order before returning to them.
According to media reports, she had gone to the House of Representatives to defend her ministry's 2009 Budget, but mere looking at the documents detailing the 2008 expenditure, they were immediately rejected by members of the House, who asked to sack her Deputy Director Budget for 'gross incompetence'.
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