The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has joined forces with the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to tackle some of the criminal activities bedevilling the telecom industry, such as telecom equipment vandalism, fraudulent registration of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards among others.
Addressing senior management staff of NSCDC in the South West Zone, at an exclusive workshop organised by the commission, the executive vice chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, hailed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) sealed between the agency and the commission, for which the gathering was to explore how the corps will deploy enabling laws, subsidiary legislations, and extant guidelines to arrest any form of criminality in the sector.
Represented by the director, compliance monitoring and enforcement, NCC, Ephraim Nwokonneya, Danbatta said, over the years, the NCC has been working with relevant law enforcement agencies, especially the NSCDC, towards protecting the telecom sector from all kinds of criminal behaviour.
“Through despicable activities that are criminal and totally at variance with national security concerns of government, the deviant elements in our midst have been acting to undermine efforts put in place to consolidate the gains of the sector.
“These criminal activities include theft and vandalism of telecommunications infrastructure, the illegal use of fraudulently-registered Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards, operating without a license, illegal call masking and so on.”
He said while the NSCDC officers have been of tremendous assistance, the objective of the workshop was to constantly engage and update them on new trends and existing regulations, requiring concerted efforts for their implementation towards enhancing sanity in the telecom sector.
Danbatta said the NSCDC and other agencies have done very well with the assistance of their personnel in carrying out raid exercises and mopping up fraudulently-registered SIM cards found in circulation, as well as raising the banner of awareness on the need to protect critical national telecom infrastructure.
A statement by the commission’s head of public affairs, Reuben Muoka, said some of the topical issues discussed at the workshop covered the activities of the commission as presented by the relevant departments in the context of laws and other regulations and concerning the roles of NSCDC, as depicted in the presentation made by the NCC’s head of enforcement, Salisu Abdu, during the workshop.
