Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has revealed that government at all levels and its agencies must tackle the problems that face the sector in order to improve service move and attract more investment.
Association Chairman, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo was elaborate and comprehensive during the State House visit to the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osibajo, and Members of the Federal Executive Council in Abuja.
ALTON is the Umbrella Association for all providers of telecom service in Nigeria, comprising of all providers of Mobile telephone services, fixed network services, backbone services, Infrastructure providers and all support service companies for the telecom operators.
According to Adebayo, ALTON had conducted a study on the Socio-Economic Impact of telecoms in Nigeria. We engaged, Pyramid Research a Leading United Kingdom based global telecommunications; media and technology Research Company conducted this research. Studies have shown that the growth of the Nigeria Telecom Sector has been transformational, as our members have added over 120 million subscriber lines to the national network since year 2001.
The easier access to basic communication services has transformed personal and business productivity and facilitated better government and security services delivery. ICT is also having a direct impact on the performance of Government at all levels.
The sector accounted for about 10 per cent of nominal GDP in 2014 with a direct contribution of around 600 billion Naira to the economy in the same year. Our sector accounted for over 30 per cent of the Nigerian Foreign Direct Investment since deregulation in year 2001 and well up to half of our Country’s Foreign Direct investment in between some years since 2001.
Our sector has created over 20,000 direct jobs since liberalization and 1.5 million indirect jobs since deregulation.
Despite the above progress made, it is of great concern that our sector is still operating below its potentials and faces fundamental network operations and expansion challenges related to build capacity and viable infrastructure to support broadband roll out.
We require more base stations, more resilient infrastructure and other elements to support stable telecom operations. However, we are faced with a number of issues for which we require intervention of Government at the highest level:
Multiple Taxation
We appreciate the fiscal pressure on Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the respective Federal, State & LGA, particularly, in the face of dwindling federal allocation.
However, multiple taxation on our industry has remain one of the most critical risk to the growth if the sector.
Taxes are created in most states of the federation with no economic basis:
refusal to pay often lead to arbitrary closure of telecom base station and seizure of tools and equipment in very crude ways by tax agents of the states.
Our Association is very concerned about the recurring cases of Telecom sites closure by government agencies. We continue to record cases of arbitrary site closure in many states of the federation in an attempt to force service providers to pay taxes and levies some of which are multiple in nature and most of which are only aimed at telecom operators;
Some examples of some of these taxes are :
- Eco Tax for gaseous emission and gaseous emission
- Sewage, Sanitation and public convenience levy
- Sanitation and refuse effluent tax
- Business premises tax for base stations situated in farm land
- Tenements rates charged per base station in some states if far higher than rates per square metre charged by the same state for residential and commercial buildings when the infrastructure occupies the same land?
These are few examples of the nature of taxes that are alien to our operations but aimed at telecom operators.
Telecoms services as critical national security and economic infrastructure
Our industry supports many other economic sectors of the economy. We are also in the first layer of critical infrastructure for socio economic development and security.
Unless we have first level of protection by Government, it will be difficult to continue to provide uninterrupted services with the type of venerability of our members and their infrastructure.
We kindly request for a presidential declaration of “Telecom Infrastructure as Critical National Security and Economic Infrastructure” as provided by the cybercrime law of 2015.”
Damaged telecom Infrastructure by terrorists in the North East
Quite a number of our base station sites, exchanges and other critical equipment were destroyed by insurgents in the North East of Nigeria, and it has remained increasingly difficult to restore services in those areas: we are appealing for support from the Government for safe access to those sites and concession by way of relieves to members who are rebuilding damaged infrastructure in those areas: we are asking for concession by waivers and relieves from Government.
