TheCable

In spite of being subjected to a sustained subterranean assault in the past eight years of the Mohammadu Buhari administration, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) still remains one of the five star agencies in the country. The pillars holding that regulatory agency have been built over a time but some staff of the Commission are not sure any more how much longer they can hold out.

Reason. Under the new administration, the dark clouds are gathering as some politicians who claimed to have worked for the victory of the APC, the party in power, are scrambling for the leadership of the agency, like vultures circling to make a final pounce on their prey.

Recall that the boards of government agencies, parastatals and companies were recently dissolved by the new government in a whiff of good news. Ironically, that triumphant decision has opened a gambit for lobbyists to swing into action, ferreting out the best opportunities. This writer has it on good authority that no fewer than twenty former governors are jostling for the board chairmanship of the Commission.
Yes. The bad news, dear friends, is that some of these politicians, after ruining their states, are looking for the next good spot to sow their bad seed and begin a new season of despoliation. Yes, they want to head a technical agency with their political paraphernalia of ignorance and make the nation a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.

Just raising an alarm? No. Antecendents support their obnoxious expectations. There is saying in my part of the world that when mother cow is chewing the cud the little one is watching. In the past few years, politicians have watched the NCC from afar and can now confirm that the Commission has the capacity to meet their festered, insatiable greed.

For instance, in the life span of the previous administration, the NCC suddenly became a revenue generating agency and would pompously announce its contribution to the coffers of government. It is possible that in previous governments before Buhari, the NCC may have made more contributions to the Federation Account very quietly. Nobody spoke about it because the remittances to make to government were quite clear and had to be done mandatorily. Under the previous government the story was different. Everything was in the public domain because the story had to be told that government was working when, indeed, the razzmatazz was a ruse to beguile an unsuspecting public.

Even license renewal which is a fundamental responsibility of the Commission to the industry became public discourse. Expectedly the two auctions for 5G spectrum which happened within a year, in contravention of the set rules, enjoyed hyperbolic transfusion into the spongy psyche of a public hungry for good news, no matter how small.

A happy President Buhari would announce in December 2022, that the Nigerian government made $547m from MTN and Mafab alone. The duo were the winners of the first 5G spectrum auction. If you add the $316.7m from Airtel Nigeria for a 5G spectrum license and another spectrum to enable it expand its 4G services, the math becomes very interesting. And most Nigerian politicians are math savvy especially where money becomes the central issue. All the while they were watching the NCC from afar.

The politicians know when to make a launch for the object of their greed and two significant but sordid developments may have sealed the fate of the NCC. One, is the unbridled power of a minister who literally pocketed the Commission and ran the regulatory agency from his office at Mbora. The other is the ability of the Commission to give a waiver on spectrum fee payment in excess of N72bn to an operator, EMTS. The politician loves this kind of game which smells of underhand dealing.

A pained source at the Commission puts the situation very succinctly. ‘’As of date, new staffs are still resuming work in the Commission purportedly recruited on the behest of the former minister as a glaring example of his misadventure. In the past four years, when Dr Isa Pantami held sway at the Ministry of Communications, there has been no advertised vacancy in the Commission, yet about 1,000 staff members have been employed, who are daily proving to be misfits.’’

The source warns that ‘’this manifest breach of administrative procedure has to be addressed, if the Commission is not to go under.’’

In all of this, the politicians have been watching from afar. There is nothing they like more than to stand the law on its head and employ only their children and those who can pay for employment slots. Now they want to move in to have a ball irrespective of what happens to the NCC. I will admit here that a certain category of politicians built the NCC by properly deploying technocrats and serious minded people whose driving force was their knowledge of the centrality of telecommunications in driving modern development. Now a new set of politicians is hanging in the wings and the flatulence from their greed may permanently destroy the regulatory authority and the industry forever.

The clouds are gathering and the signs are not good at all. I have had conversations this past few days with sources at the Commission and the endgame looks very nihilistic. I have had little balm for those who are hurting and very afraid. The dangers ahead are too ominous to be ignored.

There are quite a number of people within the regulatory authority who fear that should the politicians be allowed to have their way, it will sound a death knell to the NCC especially after surviving the wringer of the last administration.

Here are their thoughts. ‘’Tinubu (they actually mean President Bola Ahmed Tinubu) should realise that in this era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), telecommunications is the infrastructure of infrastructures. Every other thing rises or falls on it. The very nature of the technical issues involved in regulating the industry entails that it should not be about a job for political acolytes, but head-hunting of technocrats, taking into consideration Affirmative Action. The industry will farewell if women like former minister, Mrs Omobola Johnson, and a host of other seasoned professionals who retired from the Commission, are appointed on the board,’’ they moaned.

There is something about the wisdom of my people which says that when the living begin to relish the memory of the departed, they are actually mourning the impotence or failure of the living. All of sudden minds are going to the past, about Affirmative Action, whether women don’t deserve a place on the board of the NCC or even the headship.

Affirmative Action at the NCC is a topic for another day. We have had women at the NCC who performed at the optimal level. Senator Abiodun Christine Olujimi remains about the only woman that has served on the board of the NCC since 1992 and she did well. I was in the Nigerian team to the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference PP14 in Busan, South Korea. The delegation was led by Mrs Johnson as the Minister of Communications. She shone like a diamond in the sky, if you remember the cliché, and even did the nation proud by winning a global prize – the GEM-TECH Award, for initiating policies and programmes empowering women and girls via ICT. And there are so many women in her class or even better. Who says women haven’t got fire power!

The story is really about the expedient need by the new government to save the NCC from the greed of the politicians and preserve the tech hegemony of an institution that remains perennially relevant to the development of the nation. It is about the need to look at the failures of the past and recalibrate for a challenging journey ahead in order to reposition the nation for good and deliver the people from multidimensional poverty, which keeps expanding.

Technology will ever remain in the heart of every strategy to turn the nation’s fortunes around. If you accuse me of hyperbolism, please, tell me the market worth of Apple apropos our nation’s GDP!