As Nigeria gears up to mark World Consumer Rights Day on March 15, 2020, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says it has put in place a series of initiatives to address the concerns of and protect the interest of the consumers
The Executive Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, speaking on the upcoming day said the priority of NCC was the interest consumers and how they could get better quality of services as its focal point.
This, he said, is in line with the theme of this year’s WCRD: ‘The Sustainable Consumer.’
The Commission has, over the years, hosted the flagship Telecom Consumer Parliament (TCP), where consumer issues are discussed extensively in a high- profile session where the regulator, operators, and consumers interact and answers got in the process.
Eighty-eight of such parliaments have been held so far in the major cities across Nigeria.
NCC has held no fewer than 110 Consumer Outreach Programmes (COPs).
The event holds monthly in urban centres in the country. Also, Consumer Town Hall Meetings (CTM), which exclusively holds in rural communities, has been well received across the land. So far, 53 of such events have taken place.
According to Danbatta, the Commission has developed and produced consumer education materials on major telecom issues for distribution.
The developed factsheets are translated into the three major languages (Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba) including Pidgin.
Such materials cover the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) 2442 campaign, Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) Registration and Replacement, role of NCC in consumer protection, among others.
The Commission he said, had also put in place different channels for lodging consumer complaints.
These include the NCC 622 Toll-Free Number for escalating unresolved complaints to NCC contact centre and for seeking redress is working.
The centre opens from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. every day except on Sunday and national public holidays.
There has been consistent campaign on the 622 NCC Toll-Free Line.
The portal is also an alternative online channel for lodging complaints and making enquiries.
The portal is available 24 hours and can be accessed via: www.ncc.gov.ng/consumer
NCC also has a twitter account (@consumersncc) for disseminating information to consumers.
The twitter account is updated with current topical issues of interest to consumers and it currently has 10,700 followers (consumers).
The consistent campaign has attracted 22,487,849 subscribers on DND services as of December 2019.
NCC uses regular monitoring of service providers’ helplines to ensure that the threshold set by the Commission is met i.e. the number of rings before connecting to Interactive Voice Response (IVR), the connection of calls to live agents, percentage of failed attempts to customer care helplines, etc.
There have also been Elite Enlightenment Campaigns targeted at professional organisations during their yearly conferences.
This is done to carry along the high- profile professionals, who may not have enough time to participate in the TCP, COP, and CTMs which hold regularly.
There are campaigns too to empower the Nigerian youth through information and awareness creation regarding their rights and obligations within the Nigerian telecom industry as well as apprising them about the consumer protection initiatives of the Commission.
“We participate in trade fairs where we engage the consumer on a one-on-one basis,” the executive chairman said.
