We are representatives of Nigerian businesses in the Airtime business and have been operating for many decades distributing airtime to Nigerians.
We have been bombarded with complaints from various customers on the exorbitant costs on the airtime credit scheme of some telecom operators and the lack of transparency concerning the charges on this service.
The critical questions of national importance to be answered are as follows:
Who are the owners of the businesses that provide the borrow-me-credit services?
Why are Nigerian banks and other small credit lending institutions not allowed to offer the same service?
Why did two of the top Telecom operators make this service strictly exclusive to one operator and creating a monopoly in the process?
Why did the Telcos sign dollar denominated contracts for services that are provided in Nigeria against the Central Bank regulations that products and services provided within Nigeria must be priced in Naira?
Will operating this contract between the Telcos and the monopolistic operators not cause further leakages to the foreign exchange of the country and negatively affect the naira exchange rate to the dollars?
Will operating a strictly naira denominated service in US dollars between the Telcos and the borrow-me-credit operator not lead to increase costs of service to ordinary Nigerians?
Will running the airtime credit business as a monopoly not lead to over pricing of the service to ordinary Nigerians?
How much is the revenue and profitability of the service provider?
Is it true that the contract with the service provider is denominated in US dollars to enable the service provider to evade hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes due to the Nigerian Government?
We are appealing to the appropriate Federal Government regulatory agencies to investigate all the above issues urgently and ensure global best practices that will eliminate all monopolies and ensure efficient and well-priced services are provided to Nigerians.
If the Nigerian Government is losing taxes and revenue because of the opaque nature of the contracts with the service provider, this should be brought to an end so that all legitimate revenues of the government are not diverted any longer.
The Telcos can become complicit if they don’t end the practice of signing contracts for services provided within Nigeria to ordinary Nigerians with only foreign companies charging the Telcos in dollars and cleverly evading taxes that are due to the Nation.
We call on NCC, EFCC, FCCPC, and FIRS to investigate these issues urgently.
Signed:
ASSOCIATION OF TELECOM ENTREPRENEURS
Borrow-Me-Credit business, Telcos and Nigeria: Matters arising