By Clement Udegbe

IN 2010, all the telecom providers forced Nigerians into compulsory registration of all mobile phone sim cards, using the media. Supported by the National Communications Commission, NCC, Nigerians were forced to register their sim cards. It kicked off with long queues everywhere and quickly they commissioned some agents to register sims, in order to reduce the pressure in the registration fees quickly. These agents still dot  street corners across the country today.

After registration, one could wait for between two to seven days depending on one’s location to have services restored. I registered  at Amuwo  Odofin, and waited for three days to have services restored to my MTN and Airtel sims. Nigerians accepted and bore it all because we were told that capturing our bio data will help in fighting crime, help in Banking etc, with the usual government television razzmatazz, but all that was for the money and none of those promises have been kept, till date.

Ours  is a country where no one service provider can be relied upon to give adequate coverage all the time. At first, it was only Econet, soon MTN joined, and quickly Econet  became  Vodacom, Vmobile, Celtel, Zain, and before we knew it ,they changed to  Airtel, with the guys making their millions while services remained essentially below any known standards, except perhaps in the great Amazon Forests of South America!

Services followed the weather. If it threatened to rain, mobile phones became blank till the next day or so. Then Glo came on board and tried to make the difference being a fully Nigerian company, and they still cut the shots, but Etisalat zoomed in last and as I write, they seem to be the best service provider in the most difficult areas of Nigeria. The result is that you find Nigerians who carry four phones to cover all the service providers for access wherever they may find themselves.

It is only in this country that you find one handset with four sims, thanks to Tecno, a company that understands Nigeria!
My village, Uhuala Obibi – Ochasi in Orlu is in a big valley, within the Ezize River basin, and with such a poor topography telephone services networks are difficult to find. MTN and Airtel could not help us until Glo came, but now, Etisalat has provided good air and data services for my people, even when there is an Airtel mast near our market. To live in the leeward side of any valley topography like we do is pitiable.Erosion abounds as flood from the upland areas settle on our door posts, and with a government and politics that must be worshipped like we have, erosion is about to wash us away from the map of Imo State, while they disgustingly biker over who is PDP, and APC!

If you speak about these issues, you are labelled  opposition, but the truth must be told whether politics likes it or not. Our people will reject any politician who does not help them to check erosion, no matter the number of textile women materials and bags of rice they give away during campaigns. Stomach and ‘Abada’ structure will fail in Imo State come 2015.

The mission of the NCC, according to their website, is to support a market driven telecommunications industry and promote universal access. They will achieve this through the consistent enforcement of clear and fair policies that protect stakeholders, ensure efficient resource management, share industry best practices and deliver affordable, quality telecommunications services. Under their watch, our bio data was collected during sim registration exercise, they picked up our addresses, our mothers’ maiden names, and our finger prints. But over two years after all that, service provider data bases are not available to security agencies as of right. The promise to use the data base to help fight crime has not been kept. When robbers strike and steal phones, such phones continue to ring even for two days after the crime, as the thieves try to exhaust the credit in the sim, yet the police cannot tell the location of the stolen phone being used!

There are too many bottlenecks for the police to access the location of stolen phones, as special offices are assigned for such services bogged down with time consuming protocols, etc.

Given the rate of violent crime in this country, I do not see  why a DPO should not be able to pin-point the location of any telephone being used within his area of command. This will reduce the rigour people go through when they lose their phones, and will aid crime fighting in a tremendous way.

Today, the CBN again wants Nigerians to queue up to give their bio data to banks, using crime prevention as their main reason. Why can’t the information with the service providers be shared?

Should Nigerians be punished with time consuming queues for the compulsory registration as bank customers, when they carry phones which means that their finger prints are already with the NCC or telephone service providers?

CBN should assist to stop people being able to register multiple sims and throw them away at will, due to lack of information sharing in this country. Since most Nigerians, including rural farmers courtesy of the Minister of Agriculture, Dr.Adesina, own telephone handsets, and their bio data are with the telecom providers, it is a sheer waste of  time and money to drag us all back into crowded banking halls to give same information in the name of fraud prevention!

Nigerians should be respected for crying out loud. CBN, a few years back, forced us to take ATM cards, restricted sums for over-the -counter transactions, in order to boost the use of ATMs, only to start charging for that service while all the banks are declaring billions as half year profits.Who really is fooling who here?

The Federal government is once again tinkering with the issue of another National ID card. If cost saving is in its agenda, then the telecoms bio data can come handy also. Let someone spare us from this palaver please.

*Mr. Udegbe, a legal practitioner, wrote from Lagos.