ALTON president,
Engr. Gbenga Adebayo made this known at a press conference on the position of
the organization, saying that they differ with NESREA and stand by NCC position
the issue.
He said that even
if an agency of the government wishes to seal off an infrastructure, it behooves
on the agency to take on due process by way of getting court injunction,
alerting the relevant operators concerned and precisely the industry regulator
before the final aspect of exercise of the court injunction.
Based on the
foregoing, ALTON he said wishes to once again bring to public attention the
disruptions in communications service caused by the increasing spate of
interference with telecoms installations by an agency of government purportedly
carrying out regulatory functions.
“As we have noted
in the past, these impulsive closures cause very serious negative impacts to
Nigerians whose lives and livelihood increasingly depend on the 100 per cent
availability of the telecoms networks and are particularly worrisome given
current security challenges in the country,” he said.
ALTON, accordingly
notes that all telecoms and other installations must comply with extant laws
regarding environmental safety, insisting that in order to achieve this, the
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as the sole statutory regulator of the
telecoms industry has articulated and aggressively enforces regulations on the
installation of masts, towers and other telecom facilities.
However, ALTON
noted that the Nigerian Environmental Standards Regulatory and Enforcement
Agency (NESREA) has continued to assert conflicting jurisdiction on this matter,
carrying out arbitrary and unjustified closures and demobilisation of such
infrastructure.
They noted with
excitement that the Honorable Ministers of the Environment and Communications
Technology recently took ministerial action to harmonise the activities of
NESREA and the NCC on the technical environmental regulation of the telecoms
sector.
“It is however saddening
to note that NESREA has continued to carry on as if it is not subject to either
the laws of the Federation or the supervisory authority of the Honourable
Minister of the Environment,” they lamented.
ALTO mentioned particularly
the instances, that NESREA has unlawfully sealed the base station sites of its
members in Abuja, Enugu, Owerri, Ado Ekiti and Ibadan, thereby causing serious
network outages and congestion.
They pointed out
that when the NCC caused the site in Abuja to be unsealed in lawful exercise of
its statutory powers, NESREA again unlawfully invaded the site with armed
policemen, demobilized the site and caused loss of service to millions of
individuals, businesses, law enforcement and security agents.
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“We note that
some of these sites collocate over six separate operators and the activities of
NESREA have severely impacted on the quality of service delivery to our
esteemed subscribers who are affected on the respective networks,” he decried.
ALTON, the
president said, wishes to point out that such impulsive disruption of
communications service is extremely dangerous to national security, particularly
at this trying time in the national history when the uninterrupted availability
of telecoms service is critical to the ability of law enforcement and security
agencies to respond to the recurrent cases of bombings, armed robbery and other
condemnable activities which threaten national security and economy.
Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D
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