There is apprehension in about nine states sharing boundaries with Kogi states on disruption of telecommunications services as the state has lock down several telecommunications cell sites.
The states are Nassarawa, Benue, Enugu, Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, Niger States.
Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), explained that the impact of Kogi state action will affect those states because of colocation of infrastructure model adopted by operators as well as Hub sites that are among the ones shutdown by the Kogi state government.
He added that Hub sites are heavy telecom sites that are connected to slave sites located in the neigbouring states which cannot work without the Hub sites working.
According to him “This situation arises as a number of critical telecommunications sites belonging to our members have been closed and sealed up by Kogi State Government in an attempt to increase its Internally Generated Revenue IGR Collection.
“This action followed an ex-parte court order obtained by the KIRS over unsubstantiated allegations that our members are in default of tax payments to the state government (which is not the truth) and access to these critical telecom sites has been denied.
“As result of these actions by the state government, our members are unable to refuel power generators in these sites, a situation which has led to outage of over 150 sites including hub sites across parts of Kogi State.
“To the best of our knowledge, our members have settled all statutory levies and taxes due to the Kogi State Government and have taken necessary steps to comply with local laws that govern business activities within Kogi State.
“These are charges described as: Annual Right of Way (ROW) renewal, Social Services contribution, Employee Economic Development Levy, Mast site premises renewal and Fire service yearly renewal.
“Others are from the kogi State Environmental Protection Board include; payment of environmental levy, failure to submit an environmental impact assessment report; failure to register industry; failure to submit environmental audit report every 2 years; storage of petroleum products and radioactive materials without written permission from KSEPB; failure to comply with setbacks to roads, power lines and rivers/streams; and dumping of toxic or hazardous substances or hazardous substances or harmful waste without KSEPB approval,” he said.
ALTON also expressed worriy that the action by KIRS will jeopardize communication services provided by us to security agencies such as the Nigeria Police Force, the Armed Forces in addition and to other emergency and social services in Kogi and other neighboring states. This will include affecting communication links to Bank automatic teller machines (ATM) across those states.
“The outage currently being experienced is already affecting the ability of our members to provide uninterrupted service delivery to Commercial Banks, Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and other critical agencies of government in the aforementioned locations,” he noted.
