Ignorance

Ignorance, Obfuscation And Criminality In The Interpretation Of The National Telecoms Policy

By

Fela Hani

This piece takes a historical, analytical and patriotic view at the raging controversy between the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NIGCOMSAT) Limited and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Its thrust and intention is to dilate on the historiograghy and vision of the space programme of the Federal Government; the misinterpretation of the National Telecoms Policy and orchestrated media spin to rubbish both the space technology programme of the Federal Government and the House of Representatives resolutions on the matter. It will also appraise the lame attempt to rationalise and foist what is evidently an imperialist agenda on the Federal Government and Nigerians; the obfuscation of facts; the attendant criminality inherent in the depravity as well as the dilatory filibustering aimed at circumventing the directives of legitimate organs of government.

To get down to brass tacks, it is important to start by stating that the launch of NIGCOMSAT-1 was predicated on the success recorded with the launch of Nigersat-1, an earth observation satellite. On the basis of this success the Federal Government decided to explore the possibility of launching a communications satellite to open a floodgate of better and cheaper access for Nigerians to participate in the global digital economy. It should be recalled that Nigeria occupies the 38 ^th position in Africa in terms of ICT infrastructure, utilization and opportunity for access (Digital Access Index). This gap cannot be bridged by the existing operators in the telecoms sector because they are profit driven. To underscore this point further, today " more than 75% of Internet users live in few rich countries, which account for less than 15% of the world's population. In other words, more than 80% of human beings do not have access, through modern means of communication, to the information and knowledge by humanity" – This is what is popularly referred to as THE DIGITAL DIVIDE.

Yet we are living in a 21 ^st century economy driven by ICTs to improve productivity, efficiency and sustainability. This means if we must be active participants in the global market we must utilise all resources particularly scientific applications to ensure sustainable growth through job and wealth creation.

This partly explains why the Federal Government signed a contract with the Chinese Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) in December 2003, for the design, manufacture and launch of the Nigerian communications satellite 1. The satellite, a 5-tonne, 9 kilowatt orbital resource with footprint in 38 African and five European countries, was launched on May 13 2007. It has since commenced operations after passing all known tests including Launch Early In-Orbit Test, and it is a fact that the NTA transmission of the Presidential inauguration on May 29 2007 was beamed through Nigcomsat-1.

Importantly, contrary to consciously fabricated, obfuscated or mutilated reportage, the Satellite cost $256million not $400million and the award of the contract was undertaken after a competitive bid involving several companies from Europe, the United States, Italy, Israel, etc. The choice of China was informed by the fact that it offered to deliver a good quality product at a far cheaper price. It also provided 80% of the funding via a loan at an interest rate of 2%. China was also ready to allow Nigerian engineers to be part of the processes of manufacturing the Satellite from scratch unlike others who would have produced a black box that will require Nigeria to call upon them whenever there is a problem with the satellite. This is beside the fact that some of the companies bided as high as $485million. Today, not only does Nigeria have a functional communications satellite, sub-Saharan Africa's first, the satellite is operated and managed solely by Nigerian engineers trained in China and around the world.

It is germane to also put on record the fact that NIGCOMSAT Limited was registered on April 4 2006, to operate and manage the Satellite. This process is basically about deployment of the Satellite's applications and the practice consists of two parts - the upstream section (leasing of transponders to providers of associated services) and the downstream aspect (provision of last mile services including telecommunications, multimedia and allied services derivable from satellite applications). Indeed, what NIGCOMSAT Limited is registered to do is contained in its Memorandum and Articles of Association. This can be verified at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). Therefore, the obfuscation of fact by some hack writers, hagiographers and surrogates that NIGCOMSAT was meant to lease transponders to operators of end-to-end (last mile) services is both a lame pontification and nauseating magisterial talk.

In any case the prerogative to determine NIGCOMSAT's mode of operations is that of the Nigerian Government, it is not a right of armchair critics or self-proclaimed telecommunications tin gods or their cohorts. Ironically but not surprisingly among these cohorts are 'journalists' who have turned public relations consultants and who keep deceiving NCC and writing junks. I remember one of them, at the height of his inordinate passion and pecuniary interests recently wrote that NCC has the final say over licensing and operational matters - Is NCC above the law and the Federal Government of which it is just a part? In any case, NIGCOMSAT's reason for being is contained in Section 8.2 of the National Space Policy which states that Government shall venture into space science and technology to derive the commercial and spin-off benefits in order to enhance the technological and socio-economic development of the country and the enhancement of the quality of life of its citizens. Indeed, Chapter 17 of the National Telecoms Policy also mandates government to promote the deployment and utilization of telecoms infrastructure and services, accelerating the socio-economic and political development of the nation and enhancing the quality of life of the Nigerian citizenry through improved and affordable telecoms.

In addition, the National Industrial Policy in Section 3.3 identifies ICT as having the great potential in facilitating industrial development of Nigeria. To take the wind out of the sail of the convoluted logic of imperialistic surrogates, the Federal Executive Council Meeting resolutions also underscored the fact that NIGCOMSAT's downstream telecoms sector would generate millions of jobs for the nations teaming youth in such areas as engineering, information technology, mass communication, broadcasting, marketing, economics and associated professions. It was further reasoned that NIGCOMSAT-1 would attract USD 5billion investments annually in the telecoms sector. This is what agents of imperialism are trying to prevent so that foreign operators will continue to the current rip off and mega profits the bulk of which are repatriated abroad to consummate the trajectory of capital flight. If anyone is still in doubt about the responsibility of government it will be beneficial to read Chapter Two of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution – The Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. It can be recalled that when the Federal Government auctioned the GSM licenses way back in 2001, several 'palliative' measures injurious to the nation's economy were given to the operators on the recommendation of the NCC. These inimical policies include exclusivity for five years which guarantees their market and investment protection, tax holiday for five years, import duty waivers etc. The cumulative value of these measures made with good intention by the Federal Government however makes a mockery of the cost of the GSM bid put at $285m. To illustrate further, MTN in 2004/2005 financial year made a profit of N185bn, 30% as tax for the year would have amounted to about N62billion, but this was waived. This was almost twice the N35b they paid for the GSM license. Thus, just a year's incentive was more than the amount paid by the company for license. Therefore, the Federal Government was cleverly shortchanged in that deal by the operators acting in tandem with NCC which authored the palliative measures. They claimed to have imported equipment worth $5billion in addition to that they also enjoyed 30% import duty waiver amounting to $1.5 billion. This alone is more than all the revenue NCC is claiming to have made for government. We can go on and on, but the truth is that Nigeria is being short-changed because its regulatory agency is manned by incompetent and impressionable personnel masquerading as revolutionaries and saviours of the telecom sector. In spite of this moratorium, services are still poor and Nigerians still pay the highest tariff for telephony in the world. I daresay that any regulator that permits these absurdities does not serve national interest. Indeed, the characteristic arrogance and self-righteous posturing of the NCC on the decay in the telecoms sector and its readiness to rationalize all misdemeanor shows it is out to run our country aground. This I feel should not go unchallenged because it is criminal.

I also believe it is important to engage those who falsely posit that NIGCOMSAT ought not to deploy last mile services because it is against global practice to do so - these people should go and get their facts right. Anyone who has access to the Internet can search for the following satellite operators who also double as last mile service providers (SES Americom, Thuraya, Singtel Optus, Intelsat, Eutelsat, Gilat Satcom, Mubadala and its affiliated companies etc). In fact, the last two have been granted the multimedia license by the NCC – the same license it has shamelessly and suspiciously refused to grant NIGCOMSAT. Tangentially, those who say the "failure" of NITEL led to the deregulation of the Telecoms sector should go back and read the National Telecoms Policy (NTP). The NTP is a deregulating instrument but it did not outlaw government participation in the sector, just as the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Decree deregulated the broadcasting sector in 1992 to allow for private participation. However, today the Federal Government still owns NTA and FRCN, while many state governments also own radio and television stations.

As I write, the British Telecoms, France Telecoms, Sudatel and Telkom SA are owned by the British, French, Sudanese and South African governments respectively. Readers should also recall that Sudatel and Telkom SA have or are on the verge of acquiring controlling shares in Intercellular and Multilinks respectively. Therefore, those who want the Federal Government to privatise everything including our collective patrimony need to quickly redress their ignorance or collective amnesia. It can be recalled that the United States Government, the acclaimed vanguard of free enterprise, had to intervene recently in the mortgage sector crisis by injecting billions of dollars to salvage the sector. That is what any responsible government should do - To intervene in critical sectors of its economy at moments of crisis and it is evident that the telecommunications sector in Nigeria is unarguably a 'carcass'.

What NIGCOMSAT is established to do and which it will do whether NCC likes it or not is to make it possible for all Nigerians irrespective of their socio-economic status to have access to knowledge through multimedia applications (voice, data and visual images) whenever they wish and wherever they may be without paying strangulating tariffs as currently obtained. In any case the world has migrated from only voice communication to multimedia and painfully the voice communication which NCC perpetually flaunts as an achievement is so poorly delivered and Nigerians are witnesses to the epileptic nature of GSM services at atrocious costs. Importantly, NIGCOMSAT is not asking for GSM license - GSM is an outdated technology. What NIGCOMSAT has asked for and legitimately too is a universal license to deploy multimedia services – a 3.5G technology through which majority of Nigerians will have access to voice, data (Internet) and video, right on their handsets, in real time and without paying through their noses.

Those who credit NCC with what Napoleon could not do should know that the sale of spectrum and frequency as well as license auctioning is what anyone can do. Indeed, it is child's play, a necessary condition for and the first step in our determination to migrate from the analogue to the digital age in order to catch up with the rest of the world, a journey which we have just started. So, one does not have to obtain a degree to sell space. Many Nigerian entrepreneur have built stalls and sold spaces for traders which is similar to allocating or/and selling spectrum and frequencies. This is why this writer rejects the attempt by NCC to sell all of our telecommunications spectrum and frequencies to foreigners in the name of deregulation, privatization and global practices. It is curious that whereas deregulation is not intended to create economic oligarchs, cooperative monopolies and avenues for exploitation and graft, NCC's interpretation of its mandate is not only the very antithesis of these dirty realities but also a negation of the spirit behind the formulation of the National Telecoms Policy.

Consequently, Nigerians can no longer stand the ineptitude of NCC management as presently constituted because it is an agent of imperialism. It is also appalling and sad to realise the level of ignorance of so-called regulators who cannot differentiate between the number of subscribers and connected lines yet they claim to have performed the impossible. We do not need to be mathematical scholars to realise that if 15,000,000 people carry three different SIM cards each as subscribers to different networks it does not translate to 45,000,000 subscribers as touted by some so-called telecoms experts, it simply translates to 45,000,000 connected lines but subscribers remain 15,000,000. We all know that a lot of Nigerians subscribe to more than one network because none of the networks is reliable.

This explains why the Honourable Leo Ogor's House of Representatives Adhoc Committee set up to unravel the cause of poor telephony services recommended among other things the issuance of license to NIGCOMSAT, the re-organisation of NCC and the prosecution of its management for spending money which was never authorised by the National Assembly (NCC's expenditure was never authorized by the National Assembly as demanded by the Constitution). The NCC is also asked to explain what happened to the N6billion naira Universal Service Provision Fund which the Leo Ogor Committee also insisted should be probed. Why should any right-thinking person have problem with these recommendations? Is the totality of the Committee's findings not the remote and immediate causes of the decay in the telecoms sector, indeed, pointers to the rot and perfidy in the sector? This is why I feel it is preposterous for the rented crowd of media spinners to argue that some of the recommendations of the Ogor Committee are not in the purview of the Committee's terms of reference.

Accordingly, in the stead of the recent pro-NCC's lame, self-serving and evidently unproductive media spin and name dropping, NCC should go before the House Committee on Communications to which that recommendation has been referred to explain why its management should not be held accountable for the underhand practices, pervasive graft and glaring inefficiency in the telecoms industry. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) should also take up this gauntlet by investigating the allegation - it is not only ex-governors that mismanaged public fund. It will equally be appropriate for the NUJ and the Press Council to take an active interest in investigating the serious possibility of journalists doubling as paid public relations serfs of an allegedly corrupt agency of government. The Leo Ogor Committee has done a remarkable job and should be commended for standing tall above attempts of monetary inducement, reckless lobbying and harassment.

It is foolhardy, ridiculous and criminal to cast aspersions on the integrity of such a committee of distinguished and patriotic representatives of the Nigerian people - especially because this Committee did its best to protect the ordinary man on the street and did not abandon its mandate midway. After all once upon a time, a house of parliament in our beloved country set up a committee to conduct a public hearing on the same issue of poor GSM services but the committee held only one public hearing and proceeded to organise a meeting with GSM operators urging them to improve their services – the same homily Nigerians have sermonised but which is taking forever to implement. I think those who say a committee which dump it task for frivolities in the face of a national crisis is mature should actually inhabit another planet - any right thinking human being would think it strange and condemnable for a parliamentary committee to stop a public hearing midway, not after promising Nigerians it will hold public sittings in all the geo-political zones only to come up with a curious communiqué. This smacks of a subtle subterfuge and cover up and Nigerians must rise to reject any attempt in whatever guise to shield NCC and GSM operators from inquisition and prosecution.

The path of honour for NCC is to proceed to comply with the directive issued by former President Obasanjo on May 7 2007 for it to allocate spectrum and operating license to NIGCOMSAT. The same directive which President Yar'Adua has also instructed should be obeyed and which the House of Representatives equally directed should be complied with within two weeks. Non-compliance will simply point to the continuous arrogance and disregard for the Rule of Law and constituted authority on the part of NCC. Two Presidents and a patently representative Parliament cannot be wrong. Importantly, let the National Assembly immediately commence the process of reviewing the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 and the National Telecommunications Policy.