NCC, the most useless regulatory agency in Nigeria- Ori Adeyemo

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has been described as the most useless regulatory agency of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

A forensic accountant, Mogaji Ori Adeyemo, in an interview with Business247News Online in Lagos expressed a strong view on the poor performance of the regulator of the telecommunication sector of the Nigerian economy.

According to him, “To be honest with you, the NCC has a lot of good guidelines and regulations. Go to their website, you would see very beautiful guidelines and regulations, but the implementation is negative not even zero, negative.

“So, I believe they are really compromised against Nigerians because they are not protecting the interest of Nigerians at all. For such agencies, I think they need a change at the top so that Nigerians who have the interest of the people at heart can come in”.

He continued: “I am aware that all these telecommunication companies are ripping off Nigerians. Ask yourself if it is possible for a Nigerian to have access to his/her statement of accounts for your mobile line? The answer is no. It is possible for you to load N20,000 today and tomorrow you are left with zero balance and when you reach out to their customer care, they start telling you stories and if you go to the National Communications Commission (NCC) nothing is being done about it.

“So, the telecommunication industry is the least regulated in Nigeria while other regulatory bodies are seemingly trying to do something, the ones in the telecoms industry are just sleeping.

“I have had cause to write petitions on some of these telecommunication companies in Nigeria to NCC, I’ve never received one line of response. I personally took those petitions to NCC office in Abuja, they even gave me acknowledge copies but not one line of response has been gotten.

“Let’s take a look at the contracts between the telecommunications companies and their dealers which most times involves the dealers getting a particular commission for selling agreed number of products usually SIM cards within a specified time and entitlement to a certain percentage of the calls made on those lines or data expended on those lines.

“But, lo and behold, you notice that once these dealers have assisted them to grow big, they send the dealers packing for some flimsy reasons, like saying products assigned to them was found in another region, knowing full well that the dealers can’t monitor or control such, they’ll say because you did not meet your target for a particular period, therefore, they are terminating your contract.

“Now, during the pendency of the agreement, when you agreed with them that a particular commission on those calls made on the sim sold by the dealers be paid, most times they aren’t paid and you should know the Nigerian mentality. When it comes to enforcing their rights, they leave it to God but when it comes to religious issues when you insult their pastor or imam, they put it on their head but when it comes to fighting for their right, they leave it to God. But these issues more often than not don’t come to light as Nigerians don’t fight for their rights because they feel it will be an exercise in futility, maybe because they don’t trust the judiciary.

“For example, I was involved in the case between Airtel Nigeria and Plus Limited in which the Court of Appeal gave judgement in July this year and the decision of the court was that Airtel was to pay N4.888 billion for alleged debited invoices into Plus Limited’s account which could not be supported by any relevant or credible physical invoice to show that such goods were sold to Plus Limited.

“This situation is not only for Plus Limited but for so many other dealers who had fallen into this trap set by these people. I have over 400 court case that I’m managing concerning different banks and organizations because of my strong belief in the rule of law”. He explained.