The regulatory activities of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) have continued to attract favourable ratings, from international bodies, over a period of five years, from 2015 to 2019.
In 2018, the International Telecommunication Union ( ITU) an agency of the United Nation, rated the NCC high for continuously exhibiting responsiveness, progress and dynamism in its regulation of its over $70 billion telecommunication industry.
The UN’s telecom regulatory body’s rating of the ‘2018 ICT Regulatory Tracker’ launched in July, 2019, stated that the NCC, because its unwavering commitment towards employing cross-sectoral approach and stakeholders’ collaboration in its regulatory activates, “scored 78.33 out of 100 marks benchmark for last year, putting Nigeria 12th among 48 African countries and standing ahead of 36 other.”
The achievement came barely two years after the NCC was acknowledged by ITU as one of the ‘foremost telecoms regulators in Africa.’
The ITU report available to eWorldNews calculates the overall scores from four clusters, namely: Regulatory Authority (20 marks); Regulatory Mandate (22 marks); Regulatory Regime (30 marks); and Competition Framework.
In each of these four parameters, Nigeria’s regulatory ecosystem scored 17, 20, 20, 21.33, respectively, totaling 78.33, which is above what about 36 countries out of the 48 African countries and a number of countries from other continent recorded, thereby putting Nigeria’s telecoms regulator in a positive rating.
The rating is, however, not surprising because the NCC has continued to regularly hold stakeholder consultations on several regulatory matters; collaborate with national, regional and global telecommunications bodies; sign Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with other regulatory agencies such as the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), Nigeria Police, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
Other stakeholders which the NCC continues to engage in very robust manner before taking any regulatory decision include the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (formerly Consumer Protection Council), the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), the GSM Association (GSMA), Nigerian Army Resource Centre (NARC), among others.
Also, regarding ensuring operational efficiency and regulatory excellence, the NCC has continued to carry out a lot of regulatory interventions in delivering on this mandate. For instance, the NCC has intensified compliance monitoring exercises on the licensees, successfully resolved N1.03 trillion fine against MTN which has led to the listing of MTN and Airtel on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
The Commission, under Danbatta, has also promoted corporate governance in the industry, developed a framework for participation in ITU working Groups while we continue to ensure continuous capacity building for our staff for them to understand the dynamics of and trends in telecoms regulations and engage in excellent recruitment processes to get the best expertise for the regulations of industry.
