WHY NCC SHOULD SANCTION AIRTEL NIGERIA FOR SHORTCHANGING NIGERIANS

By Chidi Matthew Nwachukwu

I believe strongly that to a large extent, Nigerians are the enablers of the backwardness that their country has been enmeshed in since the return to democratic rule in 1999. Democracy is driven by the rule of law and that is why the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the primary law that decides the terms for the corporate existence and operations of the country. Any practice that does not conform with the provisions of the Constitution is illegal and must be eschewed and condemned in its totality.

Aside the Constitution, there are other extant acts and laws that also determine the working arrangement of the organs of the Nigerian entity. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for instance, being an organ of government, was established by an act of parliament (the Nigerian Communications Act of 2003) and thus operates under the provisions of the act that established it. Part of the stipulated tasks of the NCC is to hold network service providers to account for their service delivery to Nigerians. Network service providers in Nigeria include MTN, Airtel, Globacom and 9Mobile. These service providers were given license to supply telecommunication services to Nigerians, and the said services essentially include phone call and data network services. Their network services enable Nigerians to make phone calls and use the internet, thereby putting them in the sphere of “very important service providers.”

Without their services, so much will go wrong with the operations of the country’s various organs. Government organizations and the general public use the internet for all kinds of operations, and this means that a shutdown of the internet network can spell doom for all its users. The importance of the internet cannot be over-emphasized as all aspects of contemporary human engagements depend on it.

Now, Nigeria has been grappling with erratic supply of internet network since the introduction of telecom services in the country, and this seems to have become a perennial problem that has defied all known solutions. A lot of questions have been raised as to why internet network services cannot be stable in Nigeria, especially as other African countries have attained stability in that regard.
There has been so much outcry against the poor delivery of internet services in Nigeria, but the government seems less-concerned about this major problem. Many concerned Nigerians have voiced out their grievance against this same issue, yet nothing serious appears to have been done about it. I want to use this medium to share my own experience with Airtel Nigeria’s devastatingly abysmal internet network over the last few weeks.

I subscribed to Airtel data service on the 9th of September, 2023 through my GTBank mobile app. I opted for the N5,000 data bundle which was supposed to be 20 gigabyte’s worth. After the debit transaction had occurred on my bank account, I quickly checked my data balance to see if the payment had reflected, but was shocked to discover that the data had not been added to my router line. I became uneasy because I was supposed to get a particular job done on that fateful day. I waited for a while to see if the router line would be recharged, but there was still nothing even after some hours had gone by. I began to fume at this point, and quickly rushed to Twitter to call them out. I sent a direct message to @AirtelNigeria and got a rather taciturn response from the customer care agent who simply gave his name as Michael. After waiting for almost 4 hours, my router line was eventually recharged after I had incessantly bombarded their DM with threatening messages. I was shocked however, to discover that my router line was recharged with 15 gigabytes, rather than the 20 gigabyte I had subscribed for. I went back to their DM to ask why I was recharged with lesser data than I was supposed to get, and I was again told taciturnly that Airtel had dropped the data subscription for N5,000 to 15 gigabytes from the initial 20 gigabytes that it was worth. I became livid because I felt shortchanged. I felt it was a great disservice to me and to other teeming Airtel subscribers to reduce the value of data subscription without notifying us. I asked the customer care attendant why @AirtelNigeria would arbitrarily reduce the value of data subscriptions without notifying their customers, but would put out elaborate adverts whenever they are introducing new goods and services to their customers, but he didn’t even respond to the question. I then threatened to drag Airtel Company to court for breach of contract.

Now, I was challenging a mere reduction in the value of data not knowing that an even worse disservice was about to be dished out. On the 9th of September, 2023 at about 1:30am, I was awake trying to finish a client’s job when the Airtel data network suddenly went off. At first, I thought it was data shortage. So I checked my data balance and saw that I still had 15 gigabytes remaining. I then turned off the router and turned it on again, hoping that the network would return, but it never returned. I became more frustrated because I didn’t have any other source of data to work with. I thought about subscribing to the MTN data service but it was not possible because I would need some data to open my bank app. I didn’t have much airtime on my MTN line, so it was impossible to even subscribe from my airtime. I waited for some hours and continued to switch off and on the router while waiting, but the network refused to return. At this point, I was already very frustrated. I then went to bed with the hope that by morning, the data network would have been restored. But by morning, I still switched on the router and noticed that the red indicator light that signaled the absence of data network was still showing brightly on the router. I became even more frustrated, angry and restless. In a bid to ultimately finish off my client’s job, I ran to a nearby Point Of Sale (POS) operator and paid her N2,000 to recharge my small modem MTN line, and that was how I was able to get data to complete my client’s job.

After I had completed my client’s job, I went back to the router to see if the network had returned, but it still wasn’t back. I continued to wait for the return of the network but alas, I waited for 3 more days and there was nothing. The red indicator light continued to shine brightly. I checked my Airtel personal line and discovered that it had full call and data network. I went to Twitter to complain to the customer care attendants about the poor network, and I was asked to drop my router line. I dropped the line and after a while, I got a response. They told me that the router line had been worked on, and that I should just switched off and switch on the router and watch it pick up again. I did as I was told but the network was still absent. I then hurried off to the Airtel office at Wuse 2 in Abuja to have them check my line for the possible cause of the problem. On arriving at the Airtel office, I noticed that people were coming in and going out with their routers in their hands, then I knew that the network challenge my router was having was a general problem. Even the Airtel staff that spoke to me at the office confirmed my presumption. I also found out that the Airtel MiFi (the small pocket WiFi device) was having a perfect network. It was only the router network that had a fault. Upon asking some salient questions, I was made to understand that the router line could not function in any other device except the router. That was how the router line was configured. While I was interacting with some staff of the company, I turned on my router again, and this time, the network was back. I was then asked to go home with my router, that the network problem had been rectified.

When I got home, the router network continued to work, so I thought the problem had actually been sorted out. But few hours after the router had been working, the network went out again. I called the members of staff I had earlier interacted with at the Airtel office, and none of them took their calls. I was frustrated again.

I want to state categorically that ever since the router network failure started, it had continued that way without any improvement. The network fluctuation has continued to frustrate my work, and I’ve been losing money from this challenge. I thought about writing to the NCC to complain about this anomaly, but something in me kept telling me to save myself of the stress as nothing tangible will come out from such a move.

I am here today to rant and call on my fellow Nairalanders to join me in calling out @AirtelNigeria for frustrating their customers and subjecting them to severe inconveniences. @AirtelNigeria has not apologized even once for failing their customers, and this is very bad and unacceptable. The kind of terrible behaviours that some of these foreign companies put up in Nigeria will never be tolerated in other countries where the governments are serious.

Nigeria’s governments have continued to connive with companies such as MTN, Airtel, MultiChoice and their likes to frustrate Nigerians and shortchange them, and this must have to stop.

If you want the Nigerian government agencies that are responsible for overseeing the adequate delivery of services to Nigerians to sit up and do their jobs effectively, kindly come under this post and drop your comments. Thanks in anticipation.

Chidi Matthew Nwachukwu is an Abuja-based journalist and media consultant. He can be reached on cmatencore86@gmail.com

Airtel data no dey complete,I stop using airtel when I discovered this 2016.