Telecoms Services Blackout Imminent In Kogi, Neighbouring States Over Cellular Sites Downing, Warns ALTON

…Expresses Worrying Concerns On QoS In FCT, Others

By Angeline Mgbele, Senior Correspondent Abuja

Telecommunications advocacy body, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has called for urgent intervention of governments  at the national and subnational levels and  stakeholders to stave off total blackout and degradation of quality of telecommunications services in Kogi and neighbouring states in the north central part of Nigeria, following the shutdown of cellular sites by agents of the Kogi State government.

In a press statement, March 28, to which Cyber Era NG is privy and penned by ALTON Chairman Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, the association expressed grave concern over recent developments in the telecommunications sector, including but not limited to the ones instigated by agents of the Kogi State government in Kogi State Internal Revenue Service (KIRS).  

ALTON says: “The action by KIRS was hinged on an ex-parte court order obtained by the KIRS over unsubstantiated allegations that our members are in default of tax payments to the state government (which is not the truth) and access to these critical telecom sites has been denied.

This issue is likely to lead to a total communications blackout in the entire Kogi State, parts of Abuja the Federal Capital Territory and possible impact on service availability in some parts of the following States: Nassarawa, Benue, Enugu, Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, Niger States. These are States sharing borders with Kogi State.

As a result of these actions by the state government, our members are unable to refuel the power generators nor provide any support or maintenance services in these sites, a situation which has currently resulted in the outage of over 70 sites including hub sites across parts of Kogi State. The impact of these outages will gradually spread to the states mentioned above and if no action is taken within the next few days, a total outage of telecommunication sites in all these states will be catastrophically experienced.  

We are very concerned that this indiscriminate action has the potential of further leading to a total telecommunications outage in Kogi State with neighboring states and parts of the Federal Capital Territory adversely impacted.

To the best of our knowledge, our members have settled all statutory levies and taxes due to the Kogi State Government and have taken necessary steps to comply with local laws that govern business activities within Kogi State.

On concerns about degrading quality of services at the FCT, ALTON  alleges “that the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), office of the Director for Signage & Advertisement has refused to grant telecommunication Service Providers permit to build infrastructure in the Federal capital city.  This is affecting the quality of services around FCT and Abuja.  The problem is created by the governing authority in the FCT.  Telecommunications services drive on the terrestrial infrastructure.  We hereby call on the Federal Executive Council to prevail on the FCDA in granting approval/permit to our members to deploy infrastructure

ALTON and its members will no longer tolerate discriminatory charges against the sector.  The industry is planning to begin a study on varying tariff to some of the unfriendly telecommunications States in other to accommodate their demand.  Those States that are requesting for nonstatutory levies and taxes are the one being subsidized by some viable States. 

Regarding high cost of energy fueling high  cost of service  provision and safety of telecom workers, ALTON says: “We want to be clear and state categorically that the action by Kogi and FCDA will not only jeopardize communication services provided by our members to the Nigerian subscribers, but will have the greater effect of negatively impacting the use of critical communication infrastructure by our National and State security agencies in the discharge of their duties to provide necessary security for the country, especially in these trying times, when communication across states should be uninterrupted and seamless.  

It is also important to note that the work of Government, Experience of visitors economies of these states which will be affected by the anticipated outage as other emergency, social, commercial and banking services in FCT/ KOGI and neighboring states who rely on our members deployed communication infrastructure will be negatively impacted and outage. This will include affecting communication links to Government Offices, Security Agencies, Financial Institutions, Oil and Gas and so many others will be affected.

We will like to further state that the office of the National Security Adviser   had communicated to the 36 state governments and emphasized that telecommunications sites are Critical National and security Infrastructure. 

They are critical socio-economic and security infrastructure. ONSA in that communication strongly advised against sealing them or preventing capacity expansion as low capacity and outages arising from such actions will have negative implications on national security imperatives. 

State Governments were directed to explore other means of resolving tax related disputes, and must not resort to the   sealing of telecommunications sites. It is therefore worrisome, the actions of Kogi State Government in particular and the FCDA authorities continue to ignore such advice, and have unabashedly commenced the sealing of our members’ base stations

Our members have also made several overtures to Kogi State Internal Revenue Service KIRS in the past months in a bid to resolve the disputed issues amicably but the agency has remained adamant. Rather than resort to the Tax Arbitration Tribunal for intervention as is expected of a government agency, KIRS has resorted to subtle intimidation by getting the sites shutdown in a bid to coerce our members into accepting the illegal taxes and levies.

As an industry, and as citizens of this country, we are concerned about the wider implications of the action of the KIRS we hereby call on His Excellency, The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who is driving the Presidential Enabling Business Council on Ease of doing business in Nigeria, and the ONSA, to prevail on the FCDA authorizes and Kogi State Governor His Excellency, Yahaya Bello (a Presidential Aspirant) to as a matter of urgency bring his authority to bear on KIRS so as to prevent a total blackout in communications services in FCT, Kogi, and by extension other neighboring States of the Federation which are now under threat due to the progressive degradation in quality of services outages happening to our members capacity extension and seizure of base stations in Kogi State.

“We are very concerned about the rising cost of diesel and its implications on the general high cost of business.

We are concerned that unless there is an intervention to safe this sector, operators will have no choice than to begin a process of price review.

The state of security on our country is of concern, whole we commend all our security agencies for the work they do to keep us all safe, the impact of the general state of security on the country is that we are not able to provide 24/7 support in certain areas as it is unsafe to send out service personnel to some parts of the country and to other at certain times of the day.

We join in the call to Government to do a lot more to keep the nation safe and keep our worker safe.

We reaffirm our commitment work working with the security agencies in order the necessary support for national security for which we now need protection from sub-national government and agencies to stop the interference of smooth operations of telecom services.”