About one million fake phones valued at N2.7 billion were imported into Nigeria in 2013, the Federal Government has disclosed even as it also lamented the poor quality of service delivery by telecommunications operators in the country.
Minister of Communication and Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, revealed this yesterday at the Consumer Roundtable on Phone Rights organised by the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) to commemorate the 2014 World Consumer Rights Day in Abuja.
Mrs. Johnson, who said the number could be higher by the end of 2014, however, noted that government’s ability to attract investments into the telecom sector would be severely hampered if the nation remains a lucrative market for fake products.
Minister of Communication and Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, revealed this yesterday at the Consumer Roundtable on Phone Rights organised by the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) to commemorate the 2014 World Consumer Rights Day in Abuja.
Mrs. Johnson, who said the number could be higher by the end of 2014, however, noted that government’s ability to attract investments into the telecom sector would be severely hampered if the nation remains a lucrative market for fake products.
She also noted that the health hazards of sub-standard devices, and fake phones are significant, especially exploding batteries, adding that “fake phones are actually a drain on network resources as they reduce network speed and impair reception simply because they use substandard components like antenna.
“Sometimes if you experience poor quality service, it may simply be from your phone and not the network operators’ fault. So consumers, the well-known adage applies here. If the price is too good to be true then it is too good to be true,” she stated.
The minister said though quality of service issues is not just a Nigerian phenomenon but also a global one, the sources vary from inadequate or weak regulation to inadequate infrastructure, non-transparent billing, customer service and fake phones that compromise the quality of service experienced by the consumer.
“To a very large extent we know where the source of our quality of service issue lies; it is the inadequacy and vulnerability of our ICT infrastructure and also a need for service providers to begin to behave more like service companies and not infrastructure companies,” she stressed.
Mrs. Johnson therefore informed that “enforcing phone rights is not by any means an attempt to punish our network operators and service providers, it is really to bring much more to the fore that the 100 million subscribers we have in Nigeria today are not just 080/070/090 numbers but they are real people with real needs who need good customer service.”
She also pointed out that her ministry as “the regulator fully understands the issues that our operators are faced with and we are working very hard to remove all the bottlenecks to this infrastructure issue.”
Also speaking, Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Samuel Ortom, said, “consumer protection is the pivot on which a competitive economy is built; it seeks to develop standards, codes of practice and regulations. These in turn prevent unfair competition, deceptive acts and regulate the conduct of trade for the good of the people,” he added.
Ortom said the President Goodluck Jonathan administration adopted the transformation agenda as framework for achieving targets in all areas of national life and charged business operators in the country to make best practices the hallmark of their operations.
Earlier, the Director General of CPC, Mrs. Dupe Atoki, while quoting the international consumer movement, said an estimate of 6.8 billion of the world’s 7.2 billion people owned phones in 2013.
“This is also the case with Nigeria where we currently have over 120 million telephone lines in a population of 167 million,” noting that every Nigerian home now owns at least a mobile phone following the introduction of Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) in 2001.
Mrs. Atoki observed that phone has become a most veritable tool for maintaining family ties, keeping in touch with friends and even for business transactions.
She charged CPC to investigate why these rights are being violated and seek to provide speedy redress to consumer complaints through negotiations, mediations and conciliations.
The minister called on all voice and data service providers to heed the calls of CPC for discussions, adding that the council should also develop a close working relationship with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the regulator of the telecoms industry to address the phone rights issue.
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