After four mobile operators in Nigeria agreed to pay the hefty fine imposed on them by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Director of Public Affairs for the NCC Tony Ojobo said that the organisation has no right to utilise the funds stemming from the fines paid.
“NCC does not have the authority to spend the fine without the appropriation of the National Assembly, because it will be an extra budgetary expenditure,” Ojobo said in a telephonic interview with Nigeria’s This Day.
Popular consensus among industry stakeholders was based on the assumption that the funds would be ploughed into developing industry infrastructure, since the four mobile operators were fined for poor Quality of Service (QoS).
“There is no chain of government that can spend money that has not been appropriated, and NCC is not going to be different, the money must be appropriated by an Act of the national assembly before anyone can touch it,” Ojobo explained further.
“They agreed that the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have to be made, but it should be made on a progressive process, because rolling out the necessary infrastructure will take some time. What the operators committed to, is progressive improvement thus from the baseline of threshold they will begin to move steadily into what we call the ideal KPIs.”
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
