World Consumer Rights Day: NCC Pledges To Serve Customers Better-Adewolu
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reiterated its commitment as a consumer- centric regulator to continue to serve the consumer better.
Executive Commissioner (Stakeholder Management), Mr Adeleke Adewolu dropped the hint in his opening remarks at the World Consumer Right Day (WCRD) 2023 with the theme “Empowering Consumers through Clean Energy Transition.”
Adewolu said that the World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) is undoubtedly one of the most important dates in the NCC’s annual calendar of events, adding that it is a day the commission set aside “to celebrate our most important stakeholder group, that is, our Consumers.”
“This year, we are pivoting our celebrations around a theme which allows us to design more environmentally sustainable service models so that we can truly serve our consumers better,” he said.
According to him, the theme of WCRD 2023: “allows us to carefully examine the unintended side-effects of our critical social infrastructure on our environment. The Nigerian telecoms industry today boasts of over 226 million voice customers and over 156million internet customers as at 31 January, 2023. These consumers leverage on communications infrastructure for social interaction, health service, access to education, banking, etc.”
He pointed out that as consumer volumes and service diversity continue to grow, network operators have to roll-out more infrastructure for coverage in new, mostly rural areas, and for network expansion in already saturated urban markets.
In his words: “Emerging technologies like 5th Generation (5G) mobile services will also require more infrastructure. These infrastructure components are mostly powered by fossil fuels to ensure 100% availability. Without pre-empting the planned discussions about the environmental impacts of these activities, it is important that we ask ourselves some pertinent questions.
“Are there more environmentally conscious means by which we can power network infrastructure and reduce our carbon footprint?” he asked.
Telecoms infrastructure, he said, have helped to reduce other environment-impacting activities such as travel.
He asked rhetorically “can we quantify these benefits and do they offset the negative impacts? Have we convinced everyone about the safety of electromagnetic emissions? Can we find a balance between environmentally-friendly network operations and cheaper services; or do we have to choose one over the other? How can we improve the quality of the environment through our network services and how can we grow public consciousness about responsible services using telecoms infrastructure?”
He posited that as responsible stakeholders, they must find answers to these and other nagging questions, while commending the organizers of WCRD 2023 to have carefully designed a programme of events through speeches, presentations and discussions that will help us do just that.