By Dapo Akinrefon

Lagos—THE All Progressives Congress, APC, has accused the National Communications Commission, NCC, over its directive to service providers to stop running political/advertisement promotions, saying the commission intends to prevent the party from legitimately raising funds to finance its campaign.

Alh. Lai Mohammed

Addressing newsmen yesterday in Lagos, National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, condemned the NCC directive, describing it as an act of intimidation and regulatory lawlessness.

However, in a swift reaction, an official within the NCC, who spoke on the condition of anonymity said; “The press conference addressed by the APC is just raising dust over wrong practices by operators.”

According to Lai Mohammed “there seems to be an orchestrated plot to prevent us, the All Progressives Congress, APC, from using the new platforms of SMS, Ringtones and Scratch Card to raise funds for our electioneering campaign. By the way, legitimate fund raising is the norm around the world to finance electioneering campaign, hence we have not embarked on anything that is out of the ordinary by the measures that have been unveiled by Gov. Fashola.”

While accusing the Federal Government of encouraging NCC’s position, he said: “It seems the government of the day is not comfortable with that. While the PDP-led Federal Government has been mouthing its commitment to free, fair and transparent elections, it has on the other hand been doing everything possible to prevent that. Or how can you have a free, fair and transparent election if you won’t even allow the opposition to leverage the existing national telecommunications infrastructure to raise funds for its campaign? How can you have a credible election when the government of the day routinely uses national institutions as a tool to stifle the opposition?”

The party spokesperson, however, faulted NCC’s directive to service providers, saying “effectively, the NCC is seeking to block our ability to use the platforms of SMS, Ringtones and Scratch Cards to raise funds.

“Our party takes a very strong exception to the contents of the letter sent by the NCC to the service providers as well as the timing of such directive. There can’t be a clearer example of abuse of office.

“We are extremely concerned by this brazen act of intimidation and regulatory lawlessness towards legitimate businesses providing perfectly legitimate advertisement services, especially when the advertisers have not breached any law or prevented their subscribers from opting out of such services.

“We are all the more appalled that the NCC seems splendidly oblivious of the fact that the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 does not outlaw advertisements. In fact, some of the Act’s subsidiary legislation/ guidelines do permit different advertorial media such as mail, licensee’s website, text messages, and electronic mail (where permitted by recipients).

APC is raising dust—NCC

When contacted by Vanguard, an official within the commission, who spoke on the condition of anonymity said: “It is not in our character to be behind a political party. We are not for politics, and we do not encourage anybody to put messages on recharge cards. Whichever company is involved, is not an advertising company, it is not a broadcast media. It is the NCC that still regulates the telecoms sector and it has to be regulated with responsibility so that we do not cause trouble in this country.”

The source added that “the decision the commission has taken does not have to do with any political party. If there is any party raising dust over it, it is because that party has been encouraging the company to break the law and I am sure that the operator will pay dearly for it because what they have done is to assault the sensibilities of Nigerians.”