Nigerians have continued to react to
recent attacks on telecoms facilities in some northern states of the country,
insisting that the action will lead to economic setback.
Last week, telecommunications
operators were shocked to the bone marrow by gunmen who deliberately attacked
telecoms facilities in some parts of northern Nigeria, destroying over 26
installed mobile masts belonging to telecoms operators and telecoms
infrastructure service providers.
The two days spontaneous attacks on
several Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) have continued to elicit reactions from
Nigerians who unequivocally condemned the action.
Companies affected
include MTN, Glo, Airtel, Etisalat, Multilinks, and telecoms infrastructure
provider, Helios Towers. Although no group has publicly claimed responsibility
for the attacks, Boko Haram, had earlier in the year issued a warning that it
would attack telecommunications installations, alleging that operators were
assisting security operatives to track its members by releasing information on
their call logs to the operatives.
The gunmen in two separate attacks in
two days used guns and bombs for the attacks in some northern Nigerian cities,
which include Kano, Maiduguri, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi and Potiskum.
Effect of Attacks
Counting their losses, Chairman of the
Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga
Adebayo, said the exact amount of money lost to the attacks would not be
immediately ascertained until inventories were taken by individual operators,
but explained that the losses were in billions of naira, when compared to the
cost of building a single mast, which cost between N20 million to N30 million,
depending on the height of the mast. The amount excludes the cost of antennae and
other facilities required of a mast to enable it transmit voice and data
effectively.
Speaking on the economic
effect of the damages caused by the attacks, President of National Association
of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Mr. Deolu Ogunbanjo, said the attacks would
not only affect service quality, but would also lead to loss of jobs and economic
loss to the country.
In spite of the loss, telecoms
operators said the attacks would not deter them from providing services to
subscribers in the affected areas.
According to Adebayo, the decision to
continue to provide services was the outcome of the meeting of all telecoms
operators that was held in Lagos shortly after the attacks. They agreed to
provide services, contrary to speculations that operators might shutdown their
operations in North Central and some parts of the North where telecoms facilities
were attacked.
They however said that operations
would not be immediately restored in the affected areas, until operators get
full assurance from security agents that are currently guarding telecoms
facilities in some Northern cities.
Adebayo, who spoke to THISDAY shortly
after the meeting, said "We are not deterred by the attacks on our
facilities. We will still offer services to our esteemed customers, but we also
value lives and will not want to endanger the lives of our site engineers by deploying
them to restore services immediately. We will rather wait to receive safety
report from the police that is currently protecting telecoms facilities in the
Northern part of the country as directed by the
Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar." Adebayo, who frowned at the attacks,
said those involved were also attacking government by their actions.
Telcos' Reaction
Reacting to the attacks,
Corporate Services Executive of MTN, Mr. Akinwale Goodluck, in a statement,
said the attacks by unknown persons had caused service challenges in parts of
the North as sensitive hub sites had also been affected.
"We confirm that like all the
other major telecommunications operators, some of MTN's installations in
Northern Nigeria have been damaged by unknown persons. As far as we are aware,
there were no fatalities as a result of these attacks and we are receiving full
co-operation from the relevant government security agencies" he said.
"The attacks are
unfortunate as the facilities built by MTN Nigeria and indeed other
telecommunications companies are key to the ICT revolution in Nigeria and the
accelerated socio-economic development of our nation" Goodluck said the company was already
working to restore services as quickly as possible to minimize the impact to
subscribers.
He called for the understanding of
customers in the affected areas in Northern Nigeria, who may have experienced
congestion or outright network failure. "We are intensifying efforts to
restore normal services as soon as possible," he said.
A systems engineer with one of the
operators said the attacks were the biggest tragedy of telecoms operators in
recent times, as the attacks compounded their challenges.
"Already, operators are operating
under unbelievably challenging environment," he lamented, adding
"many people do not really appreciate the kind of problems operators
contend with on a consistent basis in order to ensure that service is provided
to telecom users 24 hours. We were actually hoping for some relief, and now,
the attacks have added to our challenges".
Pre-existing challenges that the
operators have variously complained about before now include inadequate power
from the national grid, which has forced them to make alternative arrangements
at all their base stations, theft and vandalism of equipment, sabotage,
multiple regulation and multiple taxation.
In a public advertorial
published in some national newspapers in April this year, MTN complained that
it recorded more than 70 cuts on its fibre network nationwide on a monthly
basis. The operator attributed about 42 per cent of the cuts to poor road
construction practices, 25 per cent to wilful damage perpetrated by robbers and
other criminal elements, and the remaining 33 per cent to other causes,
including sabotage.
Stakeholders' Reaction
Stakeholders are alarmed by the
attacks, especially at a time that telecoms operators are making frantic
efforts to improve service quality across networks. An economist and social
commentator, Mr. Bassey Umoren, said all stakeholders must rise in unison
against anything that threatens the only performing sector of the economy.
"Telecom has become the cash cow
of everybody, from the local government to the Federal Government. In fact, the
Nigeria telecommunications fact sheet released by the United States Embassy in
Nigeria in October 2011, noted that the ICT sector is the fastest-growing and
most robust sector of the Nigerian economy, contributing more than the
manufacturing, banking and solid minerals sectors combined," Umoren said.
A subscriber to Globacom, Mr. Dele
Akintunde, who also condemned the act, said the telecoms sector is one sector
that Nigerians must not allow anyone to toy with. Government and other
stakeholders, he said needed to move decisively to make telecom infrastructure
critical national assets.
Ogunbanjo equally called on the
Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, to prevail on law
makers to come up urgently with legislation that would protect telecoms
facilities and declare such facilities as national assets that must not be
tampered with.
Sectorial Growth
The telecoms sector has in the last
eleven years become the darling of investors, attracting more than $18 billion
by the end of 2009, from a total private sector investment of about $50 million
in 1999, according to the Executive
Vice Chairman, (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr Eugene
Juwah.
He said more than N300
billion was contributed from the sector to the coffers of the federal
government within that time frame, through frequency spectrum sales, enabling
government to plough back revenues earned from the sector for provision of
development infrastructure at the various levels of government.
The percentage share of Gross Domestic
Products (GDP) from the sector rose from 0.06 per cent in 1999 to 2.39 per cent
in 2007 and moved up to 2.90 per cent in 2008, and 3.66 per cent in 2009. By
2010, ICT had contributed 8.2 per cent to the nation's GDP. The industry's FDI
currently stands at $25 billion.
The sector has proven to be the live
wire of the economy, facilitating cross-industry linkages, efficiency and
productivity across the economy and providing the platform for the country's
banking sector.
Electronic banking facilities such as
Automated Teller Machine (ATM) services, online financial transactions,
international credit and debit card facilities, airline ticketing and
reservations, are some of the numerous ways that the industry has aided the
growth, sophistication, security and quick transactions in the Nigerian
financial sector.
The telecoms sector has
generated employment for several hundreds of thousands of Nigerians directly
and indirectly since 2001. MTN for instance employs over 5,000 individuals and
operates an extensive distribution chain with over hundreds of trade partners,
15 service centers, 38 connect stores, 6,140 registered sub-trade partners,
with an informal chain of at least 70,000 sales outlets across the country.
Comparing the MTN figures to that of
other GSM operators like Airtel, Etisalat and Globacom, it will be glaring that
the telecoms operators worth so much to Nigerians and the Nigerian economy.
Emma Okonji THISDAY Nigeria
Emma Okonji THISDAY Nigeria