In keeping with its commitment to enlighten telecom service consumers, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has taken its consumer enlightenment programme to communities in Nasarawa State to educate them on their rights, obligations, and privileges.
In addition, the engagement was organised to inform telecom consumers about the Commission’s consumer-centric initiatives, which consumers can use to improve their telecom usage experience.
Speaking at the event, which took place recently in Keffi, Nassarawa State, the NCC’s Director, Zonal Operations, Amina Shehu, said the engagement was in line with the NCC’s mandate to constantly educate consumers on telecom service-related issues bordering on improving their quality of service experience.
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Addressing the participants on behalf of Shehu, an Assistant Director in the department, Usman Abubakar, said the Commission had developed a series of engagement programmes to keep telecom consumers informed of developments in the telecoms sector in order to protect consumers from any unwholesome practises.
Thus, participants in the sensitization programme were educated on a variety of topics, including Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) registration, the redress process for consumer complaints arising from illegal deductions, and illegal sales of improperly-registered cards, among others.
According to Abubakar, the Commission recently directed all subscribers to ensure that their SIMs are linked to their National Identification Numbers (NIN), or their mobile lines will be disconnected.
“As a rule in the Nigerian telecommunications industry today, every mobile subscriber must register his/her SIM before activation, as there are penalties associated with the sale and purchase of fraudulently-registered SIM cards.” “We also urge you, as telecom customers, not to allow another person to use your NIN to register other people’s SIMs,” he said.
Concerning complaint redress, Abubakar told consumers that it is their right to be satisfactorily attended to by their service providers in order to resolve any service-related complaints they may have. He did, however, note that if such a complaint was not satisfactorily resolved by their mobile network operator (MNO), consumers should use the NCC toll-free number 622 to report such a case for necessary escalation and resolution.
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Abubakar also stated that another consumer-centric initiative of the Commission is the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) 2442 short code, which consumers can use to manage cases of unsolicited messages on their mobile phones. “Millions of telecom consumers have used this short code to stop or manage cases of spam text messages on their mobile devices, and we encourage you to do the same,” he added.
During the event, the NCC team addressed a number of consumer complaints by obtaining the necessary information from the Commission, while some consumers were advised to contact their service providers to resolve specific service-related issues. Some of the issues include automatic migration of a consumer from one data plan to another without the consumer’s consent, as well as illegal airtime or data deductions.
