Nasiru Yusuf

The Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) has successfully resolved 19,841 consumer complaints in 2019.

The Executive Vice chairman of the commission, Prof. Umar Garba Dambatta disclosed this while highlighting the success recorded by the commission in 2019.

He said the figure represent 90% of 19,841 complaints the commission received from telecommunications consumers across its various consumer complaints channel.

“Specifically, a total of 18, 717 complaints were lodged through the NCC Contact Centre by the customers to the Commission with a larger percentage satisfactorily solved.

“Based on their satisfaction with all these facilities provided for them to resolve their issues, a total of 19,345 satisfied consumers sent notes of commendation/appreciation to the Commission through calls made to the NCC Contact Centre and e-mails received via the NCC Consumer Portal. All of these were to appreciate the various regulatory interventions that helped in satisfactorily resolving their telecoms service-related issues,” Mr Dambatta said.

According to him in 2019, exposure to unsolicited text messages by the consumers has declined drastically through the popularisation by the Commission and the resultant activation of the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) Short Code 2442 facility by the subscribers.

He said so far, a total of 22,356, 919 subscribers have now activated the DND service either fully or partially.

Telecommunications listing on NSE

The executive vice chairman also revealed that, one of the remarkable achievements of the NCC in 2019 which has not only impacted the industry but also bolstered the entire economy was the Commission’s regulatory efforts in listing of MTN and Airtel Africa on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

Prof. Dambatta, said “The MTN listing has helped to translate into action, an important objective of the Commission, which is to promote local investment and ownership in the telecom sector. Also, with MTN’s shares available in the capital market, it is expected that Nigerians will buy shares and by purchasing the shares of MTN, they will be financially empowered and be socially transformed.”

According to him, “One of the benefits of MTN listing and those of other operators to follow, therefore, is that the telecommunications company would be able to raise more capital for network expansion which, in turn, will bring about an improvement in the quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) for the consumers of telecoms services, which is also a cardinal function of the Commission.”

He said NSE and shareholder bodies have commended the effort of the NCC in making the capital market more resilient through facilitating the listing of MTN, a move that was fallout of the conditions it gave MTN following its violation of Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) registration rule.