Dilemma of SIM card registration project…as reps throw out NCC’s N6.4b budget

By Prince Osuagwu
If the country must sustain leadership in telecom and entire ICT business in Africa and perhaps target the top spot in the global digital market, the country policy makers must understand ICT beyond Naira and Kobo.

NCC building

It means that relevant stakeholders must work out strategies that can enlighten those who make laws guiding ICT business.

If need be, every proposal towards providing a sustainable and virile programme in the industry must be tailored and presented in a way that those who do not know the nitty gritty of ICT business do not get confused and begin to chase shadows, leaving the substance behind.

If this was the failure of NCC that saw its budget for the SIM card registration project thrown out by the House of Representatives, the consequence is that the security of the nation may be the loser at last.

At least, former President of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, Dr Emmanuel Ekuwem believes so. According to him, “ the issue of security is important and should not suffer on the alter of political considerations. Having said that, I think the National Assembly need not much blame on their stand.

As a matter of fact, NCC did not state clearly what it needed that huge amount for. The stakeholders ought to have been put in the know.

I know that NCC could not have put up that amount out of sheer fraud because the commission is known for prudent management but its albatross on this case was that it did not state clearly where and how this money was going to be expended on. At least we did not know”

The N6.4 billion budget of the commission meant to help it facilitate the registration of about 50 million mobile telephone users in Nigeria, threw the house in a sort of pandemonium as the members of the House committee on communications and their counterparts in the house went separate ways on the justification or otherwise of pumping such huge sum on the exercise.
At the end of the day, the lawmakers rejected the proposal.

The heat generated from considerations of the proposal which formed an integral part of the N69.3 billion expenditure the commission proposed to make in,

in the 2010 fiscal year, forced the House to suspend further work on the entire budget.
Major argument, according to reports, for those against the approval of the budget was that the task of SIM card registration ought to be the responsibility of the operators and not the regulator, even as the N6.4 billion budget for the project was rather too much and unjustifiable.

Meanwhile, the chairman House committee on communications, Hon Dave Salako, explained that the NCC proposed the project because of the security implications of not having a clear data-base of phone subscribers on the various networks operating in Nigeria.

Salako further threw light on how the commission came into the SIM registration picture, adding that though, the initial idea was for the operators to register SIM card on their individual networks, the NCC had to come into the picture when barrage of complaints began to come from the operators on their inability to provide the necessary platform to do it giving the cost of procuring the basic equipments required to register the SIM cards and the time frame expected of them to do that.

According to Salako, at a tripartite meeting with the NCC and the mobile phone operators, it was resolved and generally agreed by both the House, NCC and the operators, that the regulator should register all SIMs already existing on the various networks while the operators took care of registering every new SIM cards to be sold out during the exercise.

However, industry reactions are that the National Assembly members should have focused their argument on the quality of equipments needed and how that could stem the spate of crime spreading like wild fire across the country, rather than on how big the fund meant to execute the project is.

NCC also shares in this belief. A close source at the commission told Hi-Tech that it was a rude shock, the way the law makers treated the budget proposal and wished they would look at it again and reconsider their positions.

According to the source, “the commission was shocked that the law makers treated the budget that way. We didn’t anticipate that anybody could go against the budget both in the figure and what it meant to achieve. We wish that the lawmakers could look at it again and reconsider their positions.

“for the avoidance of doubt, we had a public hearing on the issue of SIM card registration and the commission made it clear that this is one operation that the country should benefit from, in terms of having an enduring mobile phone users database but the operators said they do not have the facilities and it would take them three years to begin the process.

Every body knows that the country has no three years to wait in view of what is happening at the moment and so it was agreed even by the National Assembly, represented by its house committee on communications that the commission steps in to do it. That is why we were shocked that the same House that asked us to step in was also asking what we were doing with SIM card registration”

The source further argued that NCC is known for prudent management of funds and that it was the reason it proposed to do the project in that sum, adding that no other agency of government can do the project even at the budget it had proposed.

“ the budget is to cater for human and material resources that would move around the country with machines that would capture biometric data of about 50 million users, digital photograph and provide a centralised data system that could be used by other agencies of government and I don’t think N6.4 billion is too much for it. Otherwise the country stand to pay more if loss of lives and properties continue in the way it is going due to kidnaping and other vises that are rising so fast by the day But arguments apart, if the issue of security is to be taken seriously in this country, it may not be proper for the centralised data base of phone users which may be needed by government or other concerned security outfits at given times, to be entrusted solely on operators which majority are foreigners.