PROF Umar Danbatta, executive vice chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC,  yesterday launched the pilot and maiden edition of the NCC’s campus outreach programme at a special Consumer Conversation forum held at the University of Lagos.

The forum, another layer of NCC’s multistakeholder engagement, tagged CONSUMER CONVERSATION CAMPUS VOICES, is constitutive of the 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer campaigns but dedicated to telecom consumers within the academic geographical communities.

Students and staff of the University, led by Professor Ademola Adeleke, Dean of Students Affairs, thronged the Julius Berger Hall at the University, defying a heavy downpour to listen to NCC’s message delivered on behalf of Professor Danbatta by Kenneth Uzoekwe, Controller of NCC’s Lagos Zonal Office.

Danbatta recalled the background to NCC’s declaration of 2017 as the Year of the Telecom Consumer, emphasizing that declaration underscored NCC’s readiness to amplify regulatory activities with the objective to improve the quality of telecom consumer experience, as well as to restate the primacy of the Consumer among the stakeholders of the telecom ecosystem.

He told the participants of the need to activate the 2442 Short Code dedicated to the consumer by NCC to enable them to have full control over unsolicited messages and calls; and on the need to utilize the 622 Toll Free Number to report unresolved complaints earlier reported to Service Providers.

Uzoekwe, also an engineer, carefully educated the participants about the Electromagnetic Fields, EMF, radiation from Base Transceiver Stations, BTS, an issue which has attracted a lot of fear and misinformation among the public. He reiterated NCC’s position that no study, including those conducted by WHO, has established that radiation from BTS is harmful to humans.

Also at the event was Helen Paul, a luminary of of entertainment world, especially of the comedy genre, and an icon of NCC’s Face of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer, who incidentally is a doctoral student at the University. Paul also took the stage to amuse the audience and to amplify NCC’s voice on several initiatives by the Commission targetted at improving the quality of service in the telecom sector.

Uzoekwe later launched on behalf of Danbatta the first NCC Consumer Conversation Campus Voices to signal the commencement of a subset programme of the Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer. The Campus Voices are to strengthen Commission’s awareness campaigns on campuses.

– Aug 5, 2017 @ 9:20 GMT /