By Prince Osuagwu
The 2010 budget of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, seems to have once more opened up the rivalry between the upper and lower houses of the Nigerian legislative arm of government.

•David Mark...Senate President

The rivalry, overtime, raises dust and confusion as to whether the laws and constitution which guide these houses in their operations are harmonised to provide the country a common law.

For instance on Wednesday, July 28, 2010, the House of reps passed the Commission’s budget proposal for 2010, without  the N6.1 Billion Naira proposed for the registration of the estimated 78 Million SIM cards existing in the country.

But after a careful screening of the proposal, the Senate on its part Wednesday, October 6, 2010, passed the Commissions’ budget, inclusive of SIM registration proposals.

This brought about a Conference Committee of the Senate and that of the House of Representatives meeting  to harmonise the budget and thereafter approved the budget proposals as submitted by the telecom regulator, including the registration of existing SIM Cards across the nation.

However, while the report of the Conference Committee of the Senate was presented and approved by the Senate by October 21, 2010, a similar presentation by the Chairman of the House Committee on Communications, Dr. Dave Salako, at the lower House, a week after, met with stiff resistance by some members who claimed that the NCC budget was yet to be discussed in the House. The furore, resulted into  a rowdy session on that October 28, 2010 sitting.

Apart from the argument that the issue has not been discussed in the house, the grouse of some of the members who resisted the approval of the N6.1 billion SIM reg budget, ranged from allegation of outrageous amount to the debate that  operators rather than the Commission should be in a better position to carry out the exercise.

Incidentally, in March 2009, a public hearing which had officials of the commission, consumer advocacy groups, Security experts, representatives of the telecom operators, House committee on telecommunications and the general public met to discuss modalities of registering phone subscribers in the country.

Subsequently the report of the hearing, which was also read at the open session of the House of reps, highlighted that after discovering that the operators allegedly admitted inability to carry out registration of existing SIM cards in less than 3 years and six months, the Commission was asked to carry out the exercise, to help arrest the spreading security threats hanging around the country.

Besides, the Commission  also saw hope from the 2003 communications Act which states clearly that the commission was in the rightful positions at all times to carry out such exercises.

Meanwhile, several ICT experts in the country have condemned the inability of the two houses to see a particular issue from the same light, saying it gives the nation’s law making arm a semblance of house divided against itself.
An IT Consultant with a Lagos based firm, Finesse Konzult, Mr. Chris  Onoja, wondered why some law makers were putting so much resistance in a matter where the lives and security of the citizens are involved.

For him, “it is ironical that the same members who have been approving huge sums of money for the welfare of their members are now resisting approval of budgets of an  important issue that has to do with the protection of the lives of the citizens. This is not good for this nation”, he said.

Onoja is also not alone in that view. He has with him, a former Execitive Secretary of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, Mr. Godwin Morgan.

Morgan who is presently the Chief Executive of Gamnet Solutions Ltd, noted that he was one of those who participated in the public hearing conducted by the House Committee on Communications where it was resolved that the NCC would be better placed to carry out the registration within six months.

He said: “This nation cannot wait till 2014 to complete SIM card registration. Besides, we need a central data base which is secured with a government agency in charge and not one to be handled by the operators.
Besides, a government agency can easily be accessed by security agencies than the private operators”

He added that “the government has said so much about the improvement of security of businesses and citizens of this country and perhaps that was why the Senate in its wisdom approved the budget. It is a surprise that the House of Reps dominated by members of the same ruling party are unable to toe the line of exigency for the benefit of the nation and its citizens.

Also a member of the Computer Registration Council of Nigeria, Dr. Idika Ocha, has advised Members of the House of Representatives opposed to the proposed SIM Card registration to give consideration to the lives and safety of Nigerian citizens above whatever other consideration.

According to Ocha, “the lawmakers should understand that international terrorism, fraud, robbery and other crimes often involve extensive communications though text messages or voice calls.

“The Madrid bomb was detonated using a SIM card.  Back home in Nigeria, we are also witnessing increasing incidents of threats and frauds launched daily on our citizens using mobile phone platforms.

The remarkable upsurge in violent crimes in Nigeria like kidnaping, with criminals demanding ransom mainly through mobile telephone calls  have contributed to the  reason why the Federal Government added its voice in calling for the registration of SIM cards”,
He added that calls by some of the members that the service providers be allowed to register SIM Card in the country is highly misplaced.

“Asking the GSM operators to carry out the registration exercise would amount to Nigerian government abdicating its vital institutional role of being the sole custodian of security sensitive database and managing citizen identity information. That will be a very humiliating and damaging turn of event for the country.” he noted

Meanwhile, there are other consequences that this brouhaha may bring about including that none implementation of SIM Registration will stall other programmes of the Commission such as Number portability.

This is because porting is best done under full identification of owners of the lines. This means that going by the time frame of the operators, if they are allowed to handle the registration, it will take another three to four years to carry out Number portability.

Again, the independence of the regulator may be at risk here, if in spite of the NCA 2003 which National Assembly gave to the  regulator, is being subverted by way of using budget denials to tie the hands of the Commission from implementing programmes which it thought out by itself and submitted for the benefit of the nation.