Daily Trust (Abuja)
Hamisu Muhammad
14 June 2009
opinion
Abuja — The history of Nigeria's telecom industry in the last eight years is no doubt a success story which many experts and countries cherish. In recent times, the sector moves toward losing its credibility as a result of several allegations of corruption, revenue diversion and clash of interest in the licensing process, and muscle flexing between the regulator,NCC and the supervising ministry, the Ministry of Information and Communications.
One major event that dominates discussions in the media of recent is the 2.3GHz spectrum auction conducted by the regulator,the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) which led to the arrest of Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for allegedly contravening due process in the award of licenses to three telecommunication outfits.
Ndukwe was also investigated over allegation of spending money beyond the commission's budget for 2008, waiving federal revenue, and misleading the Federal Government into approving the execution of contracts for the construction of Emergency Communications information centres across the country without the land to build the centres in many locations.
The Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili was said to be behind the arrest of Mr Ndukwe by inviting the EFCC officials to investigate the spectrum licensing before it was concluded.
The minister, in the petition accused Mr Ndukwe for refusing to follow her directives to stop the exercise and turned down several invitations from the ministry to discuss on the issue. Mr Ndukwe was also accused of possible interest in one of the companies that won the spectrum bid.
Having been following spectrum issues in the Nigerians Telecoms industry, I also read an article by James Emejo (Thisday 14 December 2008) where the Executive Commissioner In-Charge of Engineering, Engr Bashir Gwandu of NCC assured stake-holders that when the times comes for the Licensing of 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz, equal chance of participation will be given to interested applicants.
According to NCC, at the time the bid process was announced on the 2.3GHZ, there were forty bidders for four slots of 20MHz, in the 2.3GHz spectrum band. Considering the large number of applicants before bidding process, instead of giving equal chance to all interested stake-holders in line with the known procedure, the NCC limited the number of participants to only those that were said to have applied whilst excluding many others.
The NCC gave about five days for the applicants to pay over N1.3billion on first pay first to get basis. The tight schedule given led to suggestions that perhaps some of the applicants might have first hand information about the auction which enable them to prepare their money well before the auction announcement. To make matters worse for Ndukwe, one of the companies that was said to have won the bid Mobitel, was said to have been given a Waiver for over 243million that belong to Federal Government less than 6 months ago. This has raised further doubt on the legitimacy of the process.
Given the established procedure, and the one followed in this Spectrum auction round, it appears that the NCC, this time has not live up to its standards by deviating from the due or established process.
At the peak of this controversial Spectrum Auction process, Daily Trust tried to contact, Engr Gwandu for clarifications on the auction, but was informed that he was on annual Leave and out of the country. It was learnt that when the Licensing process was announced, several petitions were written to the Minister of Information and Communications which prompted the Minister to invite Engr Ndukwe for clarification, but he refused to honour the invitation and ignored all reminders.
When the Minister wrote to request a stop to the 2.3GHz licensing activities, Ndukwe decided to shun the directives and interpreted such, as directive to stop advertisements, possibly in order to suit his stance on the issue. It was learnt also that the Minister's invitation for the NCC Chairman to meet at the Presidential Villa on the issues so as to resolve them was also shunned, until the Minister became so frustrated and wrote to EFCC requesting intervention before the NCC Board finalizes the Auction decision being table at a Board meeting that was held on the same day Monday, 18th May 2008. It was also learnt that within hours of Ndukwe's arrest, bulky petition document, written by one of the initial petitioners was submitted to EFCC with many fraud allegations against him. Among issues raised in the petitions which was made available to Daily Trust, Ndukwe was accused of using his office to revoke an Inter-connectivity agreement NITEL had with Private Telecommunications Operators (PTOs) which was diverted to private pockets in 2001.
Speculations are that the NCC boss is plotting to float his own telecommunications outfit after his exit from office using monies paid by PTOs. A senior official in EFCC told Daily Trust that,"there are several petitions against the NCC boss, aside that of issuing licenses to PTOs without following due process, he will have to explain what happened to NITEL and the money the GSM operators were supposed to pay for using the NITEL backbone.
"Everybody is aware that most of the GSM operators had to rely on NITEL backbone for all their operations as well as sharing the interconnectivity revenue generated from the usage of the backbone while NITEL withered away gradually" Another allegation, EFCC is verifying is that Ndukwe placed himself among those benefiting from the current Pension Scheme when he was fully aware that his position as a 'political appointee' did not give room for that. This is in addition to numerous other allegations bordering on financial management. The Minister claimed that Mr. Ndukwe did not take the ministry into consideration in the auctioning process. It appears that even in-house, most of his commissioners were not aware of what was going on in the 2.3GHz licensing process. The Minister further claimed that one of the License winners Mobitel Limited, appear to have serious connection to Mr Ndukwe which was denied by the Commission and the company. From the foregoing, it has become clear that things have gone wrong and lessons must be learnt so that such an important industry is not damaged and whether or not the 2.3GHz Spectrum auction is cancelled, confidence need to be restored in the NCC operations.
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