Ondo Guber: Group rallies support for Akeredolu’s re-election bid
By Lanre Oloyede
A group under the auspices of Ondo State Professionals Forum, Abuja (OSPFA) has called on all sons and daughters of Ondo residing in the Federal Capital Territory and the diaspora to support the re-election bid of Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu for the greater benefit of the entire people of the State.
The Forum made up of selected professionals of Ondo extraction drawn from different walks of life said its position was informed by the need to sustain the current momentum of development being piloted by the governor.
In a press statement themed: “Sustaining the Uncommon Strides in Ondo State” and co-signed by its Chairman, Architect Tunde Imolehin and Secretary, Mr Dele Fulani, the group stressed that there was need to consolidate on the monumental achievements that have been recorded by the current administration in the areas of infrastructural development, youths empowerment, job creation, wealth creation and industrialization.
“When you talk of infrastructural development, Governor Akeredolu has literarily transformed the hitherto hard-to-reach rural areas of the State into modern cities through massive construction of state-of-the-art access roads, storm water drains, overhead bridges, provision of rural electrification, potable water supply among many others too numerous to mention,” the group averred.
It added that, though its position does not disregard the rights of other citizens to aspire for any position of their choice in the state, its motive for mobilizing support for the governor’s second term bid however became more necessary because of the need to forestall the ill-fate that usually befall people oriented projects set in motion by a one-term governor in the event of premature change of government.
“Apparently, we all know from experience that premature change of government in Nigeria is usually characterized with lack of continuity in governance. As it is the practice, instead of continuing with the development trajectory he or she met on ground, every successor would rather crave for his own new 7-point agenda while the predecessor’s projects are either discontinued, abandoned or cancelled outrightly. At the end, it is the innocent taxpayer citizens of the State that bear the brunt. We cannot allow all these uncommon achievements of the Governor to be rubbished on the altar of political expediency,” the group asserted.
The forum however stressed that it remains committed to supporting the continuity project of the governor with all resources at its disposal including intellect, clouts, cash and kind.
World TB Day: Shortfall of test machine hampering fight against scourge – experts
By Lanre Oloyede
As Nigeria prepares to join the rest of the world to mark this year’s World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, experts in the fight against the disease have expressed dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of theGeneXperttest machine required for accurate and effective detection and diagnosis of TB in the country.
The GeneXpert test machine is the latest technology designed and recommended by the World Health Organization, WHO, for accurate and timely Tuberculosis test.
According to the experts, early detection and accurate diagnosis is essential to winning the battle against the disease which is regarded as the world’s deadliest infectious killer.
Report has it that Tuberculosis kills nearly 3,975 people daily while Nigeria is ranked sixth among the 30 high TB burden countries and first in Africa with 18 Nigerians dying every hour due to TB.
The experts gave this indication Tuesday at a Pre-World TB Day 2020 media conference organized to intimate stakeholders and members of the public with the activities planned to mark this year’s World TB Day 2020 which will come up on the 24thof March 2020.
National Coordinator,National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Programme (NTBLCP)Dr. Adebola Lawanson, who gave an overview of the TB situation in Nigeria, said out of the 398 pieces of the test machine available in the country, only two were procured by the government while the rest were procured by donor agencies and international partners.
Dr. Lawanson stressed that this was inadequate if Nigeria was to effectively combat the scourge of Tuberculosis, adding that the country require to have at least one of the test machine in each of the 774 local government areas, which means there is still a shortfall of 376 pieces of the test equipment required to start with.
Other experts who spoke at the conference also complained of inadequate funding by the federal government to fight the scourge, saying of the 278 million dollars needed for TB control in Nigeria in the year 2019, only 40 percent was available to all the implementers of TB control activities (8% domestic and 32% donor funds, leaving a 60 percent funding gap.
In his remark, Chairman House Committee on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Hon. Sarki Dahiru, promised the cooperation and support of the national assembly to TB control in the country, saying the house will work with relevant agencies of government to ensure easy passage of budget for TB control as well as ensure 90 percent fund release by the budget office.
Hon. Dahiru added that he will encourage each of the 360 members of the Federal House of Representatives to procure at least one GeneXperttest machine for their constituencies in order to bridge the shortfall currently being experienced in the availability of the test machine.
The World Tuberculosis (TB) Day is marked every march 24 to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic impact of TB and urge acceleration of efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
The theme for this year’s celebration is: “It’s Time To End Tb In Nigeria, with the slogan, “ Check that cough, time no dey!”
Prominent civil Rights advocacy group, Human Rights
Writers Association Of Nigeria, HURIWA, has carpeted the Kano state governor
Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje for hurriedly dethroning the powerful Emir of Kano state
even whilst there is pending litigation before the court of competent
jurisdiction.
The Rights group said it was sad and unfortunate
that the national ruling party- All Progressives Congress, APC, at all levels
have carried out actions or made confrontational statements that have belittled
the functions and constitutional powers of the judiciary.
The group said the action of the Kano state governor
to unilaterally remove the Emir of Kano without waiting for the matters
instituted by the Emir to be determined one way or the other is another
manifestations of the disdainful way the All Progressives Congress looks at the
judicial arm of government.
In another
development, HURIWA has warned the suspended national chairman of the ruling
All Progressives Congress, APC Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to stop his open
rebellion against constituted and competent court of law and proceed on
suspension pending the determination of the matter before justice Danlami
Senchi of Abuja High Court or his appeal against the restraining order against
him made by the Abuja High court.
HURIWA said it was an abomination for a man in the
position of Adams Oshiomhole to even remotely be involved in actions that may
be interpreted as forum shopping with the sinister motive to undermine the
constitutional powers of the Courts of law.
“We expect the much
respected erstwhile unionist and a two terms state governor Adams Oshiomhole to
dissociate himself completely from the counter order from the Federal High
Court in Kano which illegally aimed at overturning an earlier decision of court
of same coordinate jurisdiction made by Honorable Justice Danlami Senchi of the
Abuja High Court.
“As one of those who has benefitted from the good
fruits of judicial adjudication, we expect the suspended national chairman of
APC not to be in the band wagon of lawless politicians who do not mean well for
our constitutional democracy by roaming about the courts to obtain injunctions
which they think can override orders made by court of coordinate jurisdiction,”
the group said.
Speaking
specifically on the reported dethronement of the Emir of Kano by the Kano state
governor, the Rights group dismissed the action as lawless and a primitive show
of brute force and a resort to crude self-help measures since the embattled
Emir was already in the Kano state High court challenging his invitation by the
Kano state House of Assembly over so-called allegations of corruptions.
“We in HURIWA
hereby call on the Kano state governor Abdullahi Ganduje to reverse his illegal
decision to dismiss the Emir of Kano and await the determination of the matter
the traditional ruler filed before the competent court of law.
The Kano state governor has benefitted so much from
the court system. How come he is behind this indescribable affront against the
judiciary? Section
6 is clear on the powers of the judiciary and whilst the matter is pending, it
is illegal to seek to foist a fait accompli on the court.
Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has listed challenges of quality of service delivery in telecoms sector to include infrastructure damage, bombed sites due to insurgent activities, illegal site lock-outs, unstable power supply and prolonged power outage, denial of statutory permits for infrastructure roll-out, high cost of Right of Way (RoW), and use of substandard devices by the consumers, among others.
ALTON stated this in its presentation at the first quarter 2020 meeting of Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) held in Abuja on Thursday(05/03/2020).
In its presentation focused on challenges of quality of service delivery in telecoms sector, ALTON noted that the challenge of poor QoS in the telecom industry is an issue that requires collaborative efforts of the National Assembly as well as state and local governments, to tackle.
Elaborating further, ALTON presentation indexed a situation where telecommunications operators continue to suffer various forms of infrastructure damage across the country, and noted that such a challenge usually leads to sudden outages or poor QoS.
ALTON recalled that at the onset of the insurgency in the North-East region, operators were also at the receiving end of the destruction that was visited on the infrastructure in the region. He cited Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states as areas where hundreds of BTS sites were either bombed or affected due to dependence on a bombed site. Such vandalism resulted in loss of coverage in so many places including Dikwa, Gamboru, Monguno, Bama, Konduga and Damaturu.
“Operators have been able to restore a lot of these sites, while restoration at other facilities are still pending due to security concerns. In some cases those that were restored have been bombed again, but efforts are currently ongoing in collaboration with agencies in the security services and state governments, to secure sites,” ICAF noted in the presentation. It also assured participants that “with these efforts it is hoped that there will be noticeable improvement in coverage, leading to reduced dropped calls in the affected areas.”
The presentation further explained that the failure of some governmental authorities and their subsidiary agencies to grant the statutory approvals required by operators to build more sites is another problem. ICAF affirmed that “as the existing infrastructure get to full capacity, operators need to build more facilities to accommodate excess call, SMS, data and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) traffic. Unfortunately, in the past seven years, the FCT Administration, in particular, has not granted approvals for telecommunications sites to be built in the Territory.”
On vandalism and theft, the ALTON presentation observed that this has been a recurring experience of the operators as unknown hoodlums increasingly break into sites, kill or injure the guard on duty and cart away valuable equipment such as the power generating sets, base transceiver station (BTS) equipment and air conditioners among other facilities. It said these criminal activities immediately lead to network outages in the area covered by facilities that suffered vandalism.
ALTON, however, noted that no operator desires to have poor service delivery because of the increased competition that has been engendered by the telecoms regulator.
According to ALTON, “we are in a highly competitive market, where we have multiple players and we should understand that there is no operator that wants to have downtime on its network as that can lead to loss of subscribers to rival operators. The NCC has heightened this with the introduction of the Mobile Number Portability, which makes it easier for a subscriber that is not satisfied with his or current network in terms of service delivery to migrate to other preferred network.”
The presentation further said: “This means if there is any challenge that is affecting any operator’s ability to deliver better experience to its numerous customers, the logical thing is for that operator to take steps to address the challenge so that it will be able to retain its customers. But most of these challenges are far beyond what operators can control. The NCC has been doing a lot to get the buy-in of all relevant stakeholders to address some these challenges, but not much inroad has been recorded because not all stakeholders in the ecosystem are fully supporting the regulator’s efforts at addressing these issues in order to ensure that telecom consumers get top-notched services.”
Proffering solutions to the challenges, ICAF said while the regulator has been taking QoS measurements and sanctioning the erring operators, it must also be acknowledged that it has been making efforts toward addressing all the identified challenges faced by the operators in order to improve service delivery on the networks to telecoms consumers.
“However, if we all agree that telecoms is central to our socio-economic development, then the NCC’s efforts need to be supported by all stakeholders, especially the National Assembly through the passage of the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Bill and; we at ICAF also urge the state governors to be considerate about policy measures in order to encourage massive deployment of telecoms infrastructure in their states, as being championed by the NCC,” the advocacy group recommended in the presentation.
In its submission, the Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) advocated the need for stakeholders at the federal, state and local levels, both in public and private sectors, to work with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to collectively contribute towards improving the Quality of Service (QoS) delivery by MNOs in the country.
Explaining further, ICAF stated that the collaboration is both urgent and necessary because telecoms has long migrated from being a mere enabler of communication, to an industry that has become widely acknowledged as being the most important enabler of socio-economic activities in contemporary society.
The advocacy body said as with every other sector of the economy, the telecommunications sector has its own peculiar challenges that impact on the ability of telecoms operators to deliver seamless services to customers.
Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has listed challenges of quality of service delivery in telecoms sector to include infrastructure damage, bombed sites due to insurgent activities, illegal site lock-outs, unstable power supply and prolonged power outage, denial of statutory permits for infrastructure roll-out, high cost of Right of Way (RoW), and use of substandard devices by the consumers, among others.
ALTON stated this in its presentation at the first quarter 2020 meeting of Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) held in Abuja on Thursday(05/03/2020).
In its presentation focused on challenges of quality of service delivery in telecoms sector, ALTON noted that the challenge of poor QoS in the telecom industry is an issue that requires collaborative efforts of the National Assembly as well as state and local governments, to tackle.
Elaborating further, ALTON presentation indexed a situation where telecommunications operators continue to suffer various forms of infrastructure damage across the country, and noted that such a challenge usually leads to sudden outages or poor QoS.
ALTON recalled that at the onset of the insurgency in the North-East region, operators were also at the receiving end of the destruction that was visited on the infrastructure in the region. He cited Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states as areas where hundreds of BTS sites were either bombed or affected due to dependence on a bombed site. Such vandalism resulted in loss of coverage in so many places including Dikwa, Gamboru, Monguno, Bama, Konduga and Damaturu.
“Operators have been able to restore a lot of these sites, while restoration at other facilities are still pending due to security concerns. In some cases those that were restored have been bombed again, but efforts are currently ongoing in collaboration with agencies in the security services and state governments, to secure sites,” ICAF noted in the presentation. It also assured participants that “with these efforts it is hoped that there will be noticeable improvement in coverage, leading to reduced dropped calls in the affected areas.”
The presentation further explained that the failure of some governmental authorities and their subsidiary agencies to grant the statutory approvals required by operators to build more sites is another problem. ICAF affirmed that “as the existing infrastructure get to full capacity, operators need to build more facilities to accommodate excess call, SMS, data and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) traffic. Unfortunately, in the past seven years, the FCT Administration, in particular, has not granted approvals for telecommunications sites to be built in the Territory.”
On vandalism and theft, the ALTON presentation observed that this has been a recurring experience of the operators as unknown hoodlums increasingly break into sites, kill or injure the guard on duty and cart away valuable equipment such as the power generating sets, base transceiver station (BTS) equipment and air conditioners among other facilities. It said these criminal activities immediately lead to network outages in the area covered by facilities that suffered vandalism.
ALTON, however, noted that no operator desires to have poor service delivery because of the increased competition that has been engendered by the telecoms regulator.
According to ALTON, “we are in a highly competitive market, where we have multiple players and we should understand that there is no operator that wants to have downtime on its network as that can lead to loss of subscribers to rival operators. The NCC has heightened this with the introduction of the Mobile Number Portability, which makes it easier for a subscriber that is not satisfied with his or current network in terms of service delivery to migrate to other preferred network.”
The presentation further said: “This means if there is any challenge that is affecting any operator’s ability to deliver better experience to its numerous customers, the logical thing is for that operator to take steps to address the challenge so that it will be able to retain its customers. But most of these challenges are far beyond what operators can control. The NCC has been doing a lot to get the buy-in of all relevant stakeholders to address some these challenges, but not much inroad has been recorded because not all stakeholders in the ecosystem are fully supporting the regulator’s efforts at addressing these issues in order to ensure that telecom consumers get top-notched services.”
Proffering solutions to the challenges, ICAF said while the regulator has been taking QoS measurements and sanctioning the erring operators, it must also be acknowledged that it has been making efforts toward addressing all the identified challenges faced by the operators in order to improve service delivery on the networks to telecoms consumers.
“However, if we all agree that telecoms is central to our socio-economic development, then the NCC’s efforts need to be supported by all stakeholders, especially the National Assembly through the passage of the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Bill and; we at ICAF also urge the state governors to be considerate about policy measures in order to encourage massive deployment of telecoms infrastructure in their states, as being championed by the NCC,” the advocacy group recommended in the presentation.
In its submission, the Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) advocated the need for stakeholders at the federal, state and local levels, both in public and private sectors, to work with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to collectively contribute towards improving the Quality of Service (QoS) delivery by MNOs in the country.
Explaining further, ICAF stated that the collaboration is both urgent and necessary because telecoms has long migrated from being a mere enabler of communication, to an industry that has become widely acknowledged as being the most important enabler of socio-economic activities in contemporary society.
The advocacy body said as with every other sector of the economy, the telecommunications sector has its own peculiar challenges that impact on the ability of telecoms operators to deliver seamless services to customers.
NCC Receives Outstanding Regulator Of The Year Award
by Lanre Oloyede
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has emerged the best public sector regulatory organisation as it receives the ‘2019 Outstanding Regulator of the Year Award’ at this year’s edition of Independent Awards.
The award was presented to the Commission at a colourful ceremony held on Friday (07/03/2020) at the Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Director of Public Affairs, NCC, Dr. Henry Nkemadu, received the award on behalf of NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta.
Receiving the award amidst a loud ovation, Nkemadu appreciated the organizers of the Award for adjudging the Commission as deserving such recognition.
Nkemadu said the award was a testament to the untiring efforts of the Commission in creating an enabling environment for all telecom stakeholders. He said the award is also a call for the Commission to do more for the consumers.
The NCC Director of Public Affairs restated the commitment of the Commission to continually strive towards its goals of ensuring high quality of service for the consumers. He declared that the Commission will put in place well-monitored measures toward protecting telecom consumers and consolidating the gains of the Nigerian telecoms sector.
