A non-government organization, Coalition against Corruption
in the Public Sectors has petitioned the Nigerian Communication Commission
(NCC) over the fraudulent practices being perpetrated by the GSM companies
through the customized caller-ringing tones and short message service.
In a petition addressed to the Executive Vice Chairman, NCC and
copied to MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat which was signed by the
association’s President and Secretary; Carl Umegboro and Dr. Mohammed Yinusa
respectively, the group alleges that the GSM companies’ tactful extortions
against innocent subscribers are becoming unbearable.
The petition elucidated the allegation stating that money
are incessantly deducted from subscribers’ account without their knowledge, and
essentially without clear offer and acceptance, through frivolous information
and communication technology applications. It stated, “most times, without
requesting or applying for customized caller-tunes or other online facilities, subscribers’
accounts believably maneuvered from the control rooms by the staff based on
agreement with the partnering caller-tunes operators are allocated with
unrequested caller tunes or worthless packages which accrues passive incomes to
the fraudulent operators. These accounts for the reason why you may wonder how
some old persons’ ringing tones play songs they couldn’t have reasonably
requested for or didn’t understand or be constantly receiving charged text messages
despite the fact that they are not lettered.”
“In another dimension, aimless customized messages are
programmed and bulk-sent to millions of subscribers ending with ambiguous “OK”.
Severally, when subscribers click on “Ok” aiming to continue with his call, a
contract anchored on “automatic renewal” with either N50, N100 or more payable weekly
or monthly is automatically accepted unknowingly. The most painful aspect of
this fraud is that these fraudulent contracts renew automatically as programmed
at the end of every week or month except stopped manually”, the group said.
The Coordinator of the association added, “as I speak now,
several subscribers have continuously serviced these fraudulent contracts for
years without knowing how to terminate it. Personally, I have faced it
particularly on MTN network, and on lodging complaints, efforts to recover the
deducted amounts have always met a brick wall except the uncountable apologies
by the customer-care representatives. It may interest you to know that these
applications are also programmed to operate accumulatively in such that even
where a subscriber didn’t recharge for months, his first recharge would first
clear the bills for the period in arrears”.
Following this ugly situation, some even claimed that at
some points, they had to opt for new lines when it became obvious that their
complaints were mere waste of times. When our team interviewed some
subscribers, the aggregate lamentation portrayed that of helplessness and hopelessness
over these anomalies. An MTN subscriber resident in Lagos, Mr Ernest Bassey
lamented bitterly that he woke up to discover that the N200 airtime he
recharged at night had disappeared through this fraudulent trend.
As a check to these abysmal conducts, the group opines that
such customized caller-tones and contractual service-oriented SMS should not
only be strictly accompanied by designate-codes but also must have a clear “confirmatory
accept” prior to the validation of the contracts and finally deductions from
subscribers.
The group through its President, Umegboro noted
that the group had successfully embarked on similar projects earlier over the
injustices and intimidations by the distribution companies, DISCOs against the electricity consumers in the country specifically
on the arbitrary ‘crazy’ bills, removal of N750-fixed charge, and payment of
prepaid-meters by existing customers who already paid for the outdated analogue
meters. He expressed gratitude to the National Assembly for considering the
bills presented through a distinguished Senator, and equally, the Chairman of
the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, Dr Sam Amadi who in
acknowledgement affirmed that his commission was looking into the petition, and
today, the efforts are yielding positive results.
Umegboro however reiterated
on its unwavering confidence in the present government of President Mohammadu
Buhari noting that with the credible team he has assembled as a workforce,
Nigeria has no option than to move to the next level of economic growth in this
political dispensation.
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