Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) have been approached by Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy Dr. Bosun Tijani to help resolve the unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) debt issue, which stands at N120 billion.
When telecommunications operators visited Tijani over the weekend in Abuja, he made this statement.
The telcos have been requesting the minister’s intervention on the issue for almost four years, under the auspices of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), which is chaired by Gbenga Adebayo. The Guardian was provided with meeting excerpts yesterday.
In response, the minister stated: “We need to work together on this.” The solutions to the problems must largely rely on innovations. Since every service has expenses associated with it, banks shouldn’t expect free service.
Tijani criticized the underutilization of data in problem-solving, pointing out that President Bola Tinubu is passionate about technology and that the industry’s obstacles are solvable.
It is not enough to simply list the Right of Way (RoW) as a barrier; all related problems, such as the need to unify ducts and dig once, among others, must also be investigated. To obtain information on potential solutions, he said, it is necessary for impartial parties to investigate the issues and their advantages.
In order to accomplish this, Tijani intends to establish two separate think tank groups. He begged ALTON to collaborate with him on this, emphasizing the necessity of working together to find a solution to stop the country’s infrastructure from being destroyed.
The minister informed ALTON that the industry lacks innovation in its efforts to use technology to unlock services for a large number of people and reach the unreached in rural areas.
The telecom operators informed Tijani earlier in their submission that they have been facing persistently high macroeconomic headwinds that have resulted in difficult operating conditions and a decrease in domestic CAPEX and foreign direct capital inflow investments into the industry of 30.37 percent and 46.9 percent, respectively, between 2021 and 2022.
In order to deepen investment and achieve the overall goal of driving increased CAPEX deployment for overall QoS improvement in line with the Strategic Plan’s targets to achieve a 50% improvement in telephony service by the end of 2024, ALTON submitted that a number of teething investment-impacting causal factors need to be definitively addressed.
The minister was reminded by the telcos that ICT is a “enabler” for every other essential infrastructure, as well as for infrastructure sectors that are essential to the security and productivity of the country
They claim that in order for telecommunications infrastructure to operate at its best, it needs a sophisticated and interconnected support ecosystem made up of, among other things, fiber, satellites, towers, base stations, switches, and data centers. All of these components must work continuously in order to provide the best possible quality of service.
However, there have been instances of detrimental cross-sectoral effects on quality of life (QoS) brought about by excavation damage to infrastructure during civil works projects like building roads, intentional or inadvertent vandalism and sabotage, as well as theft of supplies, equipment, and cable like diesel, generators, and batteries. Additionally, there have been delays in the granting of site approvals for new towers and base stations, harassment of staff, and denial of site access by state and local agencies to compel payment for levy payments, according to ALTON.
Adebayo informed the minister that telecom operators now pay at least 49 different taxes and levies. He also emphasized that members continue to be burdened by multiple taxation and are coerced by sub-nationals to comply with tax and levy demands that lack legal justification, endangering investment, sustainability, and industry growth.
Exorbitant fees for return of work (RoW), increases under the Finance Act 2023 (such as the TEFFT tax’s upward review from 2.5 percent to 3 percent), the imposition of an import levy on goods, the removal of the capital allowance on telecommunications goods and services under Section 32 of the amended Companies Income Tax Act, and other examples are among the examples;
He said, “The increase in Legislative Bills seeking to impose new taxes and levies on private organizations (including ALTON’s members) at the National and State Houses of Assemblies further compounds the foregoing state of affairs.”
