The Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) has called on the National Assembly to speedily pass the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Bill into law as the survival of the survival and substainability of the Nigerian telecom industry depends on the Bill.
This call formed part of te resolutions reached at their first quarter 2020 meeting held in Abuja last week.
According to ICAF, the passage of the bill will support the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to collectively contribute towards improving the Quality of Service (QoS) delivery.
“If we all agree that telecoms is central to our socio-economic development, then the NCC’s efforts to improve quality of services need to be supported by all stakeholders, especially the National Assembly through the passage of the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Bill,” it said.
The advocacy group also recommended that the state governors must be considerate about policy measures in order to encourage massive deployment of telecoms infrastructure in their states, as being championed by the NCC.
ICAF believes that the absence of the Bill has caused a re-occurrence of vandalism and theft of telecom infrastructure, leading to network outages in the area covered by facilities that suffered vandalism.
“There has been a recurring experience of vandalism 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 stated.
It also argued that no telecom operator desires to have poor service delivery because of the increased competition that has been engendered by the telecoms regulator.
The Federal Government of Nigeria had sponsored Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) bill before the National Assembly which when passed into Law would ensure that Telecoms Infrastructure all around the country is protected and identified as an important national asset.