The Nigerian Communications Commission has partnered with the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps to combat criminal activities such as telecom equipment vandalism and fraudulent registration of Subscriber Identity Module cards among others, plaguing the telecoms industry.
Speaking at a gathering of senior management staff of NSCDC in the South West Zone, at an exclusive workshop organised by the commission, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said the gathering was to explore how the Corps will deploy enabling laws, subsidiary legislations, and extant guidelines to arrest any form of criminality in the sector.
According to Danbatta, who was represented at the workshop by the Director, Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement at the commission, Ephraim Nwokonneya, the NCC has been working with relevant law enforcement agencies, and in particular the NSCDC, towards protecting the telecoms sector from all kinds of criminal behaviour over the years.
In a statement, he said, “Through despicable activities that are criminal and totally at variance with national security concerns of government, the deviant elements in our midst have been acting to undermine efforts put in place to consolidate the gains of the sector.”
Danbatta said, “These criminal activities include theft and vandalism of telecommunications infrastructure, the illegal use of fraudulently-registered SIM cards, operating without a license, illegal call masking, and so on.”
He added that the NSCDC and other agencies have done well with the assistance of their personnel in carrying out raid exercises and mopping up fraudulently-registered SIM cards found in circulation, as well as in raising the banner of awareness on the need to protect critical national telecom infrastructure.
Recently, the commission disclosed that over 50,000 telecoms infrastructure was destroyed in the last five years.
According to the commission, this was impacting the quality of telecom services in the nation.
Explaining the impact, Danbatta, said, “The impact of vandalism of infrastructure is felt by all in the quality of services rendered as it results in increasing drop calls, data and Internet connectivity disruptions, aborted and undelivered short messaging services, as well as countless failed calls.”
