Some Telcos CEOs Behaving Badly

It is surprising that the telecom industry, once an uprising sector has plummeted as a result of sheer heedlessness of some Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators.
From the boom of the mid 1990s, the telecom industry is now hobbled by the same corporate governance issues, the hydra-headed monster that led to the recent Nigerian banking crisis that echoed across Africa.
Like cancer, corporate mismanagement is threatening to throw Nigeria into another chaos and erode the huge gains recorded in the telecom sector.
Already, the spate of collapse of telecommunications companies in Nigeria has been staggering. Individual companies are going bankrupt and the market is going from explosion to implosion.
Apart from Starcomms Plc and Multilinks-Telkom, CDMA operators are now hanging on hair breath no thanks to years of successive mismanagement of the companies.
The CDMAs got into the trouble themselves through the same fraudulent and self-serving practices of some members of board and management and the overbearing influence of chairmen or MD/CEOs of CDMAs, especially in family-controlled businesses led to the collapse of the banking industry sometime ago.
Also, non-compliance with laid down internal controls and operation procedures, biased recruitment exercises and general lack luster management practices are some of the reasons why the companies have failed to click. 
They are guilty of inadequate planning of the business, mistaken estimate of market demand for product or service, failure to select and use appropriate outside professional advisors, inability to market product or services effectively and poor timing of expenditures due to poor planning
Because of the management ineptitude, the CDMA operators over the years regularly and consciously ignored sustained and systematic red flags as their promoters and managers diverted funds meant for expansion into frivolous projects like manufacturing, oil and gas, elections and so on.
Today, most of the companies are now either on life support, or already dead and decomposing.
Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) also admitted that a number of telcos have actually begun to show disturbing signs of distress.
NCC agreed that it is as a result of issues revolving around poor corporate governance, wrong business decisions, and the management style employed by these telcos in the economic crisis.
It is not just enough for the NCC to realize that there is trouble, it must take step to avert total collapse of the industry.
Telecom industry has a major role in Nigerian economy and government must enforce effective telecom policies and regulations.
In the interim, management of sick telecom companies should be replaced with qualified personnel to forestall total failure.
It is important to institute management and performance benchmark for all chief drivers of the telecom companies.
Unfortunately, corporate governance is not about laws but their enforcement. It is as much about corporate culture as it is about societal culture.