The National Association of Telecoms Subscribers has challenged the Nigerian Communications Commission to start biting instead of the usual barking without results over unsolicited calls and messages from telecoms operators.
The subscribers alleged that the NCC was being sluggish in its bid to protect consumers from the telecoms operators, adding that there was an upsurge in the rate of unsolicited calls and messages, which they were not comfortable with.
The President of NATCOMS, Adeolu Ogunbanjo, said that NCC was not biting, but only barking.
“I’m going to make another effort to get the NCC to act. They don’t want to wield the big stick.
You know why? We are saying that we want more investments in Nigeria. If you start sanctioning every little thing, it may discourage investors,” he said.
The umbrella body of telecoms subscribers also threatened to sue 9mobile and NCC, if the narrative did not change, accusing the NCC of treating the issue with kid gloves for it not to be seen as deliberately discouraging investors.
He said, “I have a case against 9mobile. It is on the increase. The NCC should start biting. Anyway, at the parliament, we are going to say a lot on this. Even when I reported to NCC’s 622, which is a toll-free line, 9mobile sent me a text that it had seen it, done this and that. But it sent me another text the third day. I will still go back to NCC.”
But the Director of Publicity, NCC, Dr Henry Nkemadu, refuted the claim on unsolicited calls and messages, describing it as a web of lies. He, however, challenged the president of NATCOMS to support his claim with verifiable statistics.
Meanwhile, a caller-identification and call-blocking application company, Truecaller, ranked Nigeria as the ninth most spammed country in a special report in 2017. Truecaller said India occupied the first position among the top 20 countries in the world affected by spam calls with 22.6 per cent. Next to India were the United States and Brazil with 20.7 per cent apiece.
In its 2018 report, Brazil occupied the number one spot. India, Chile and South Africa followed with second, third and fourth positions respectively. But unlike in 2017 when African countries featured on the top 20 list, only South Africa appeared on the list in 2018.
