By Abdullahi Yusuf
The Association of Mobile Phones and Allied Products Traders of Nigeria (AMPAT) has asked the Federal Government to engage it in the implementation of the new policy on mobile phone registration fees to ensure fairness and transparency in the exercise.
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The National Chairman of the Association, Alhaji Sani Tasiu Ibrahim,made the request while addressing journalists at the NUJ press centre,Kano,on Saturday.
“Engage the stakeholders first.Consultation must come before implementation, not after. You cannot impose first and explain later,” the association said.
It also urged the government to suspend the phone registration fees for 120 days to allow consultations with the relevant stakeholders.
“Give us 120 days. Stop the fees, stop the blocking, stop the threatening messages for 120 days while we sit down and sort this out together.
“Show us the law.The NCC must follow the law, especially the provisions of the Nigerian Communications Act and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Publish the rules and the fee schedule. If the fee is lawful, show us where it is written.
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“Our members are being asked to pay a fee for every single phone they import,about six hundred and seventy naira for a small phone, and close to four thousand naira for a big one.
“Think about that.A phone we sell for ten thousand naira — the phone a poor man buys for his son going to secondary school — carries a fee of almost four thousand naira before it even enters the market.
“Where is that money going?To a private company. Which company? Nobody knows. Under what law? Nobody has seen it. We have asked. They have not shown us,”AMPAT said.
The union said its members contribute billions of Naira as revenue to the country annually, through customs duties, taxes and through every their markets.
“Our members have invested billions of Naira in this economy,in shops, in warehouses, in vehicles, in supply chains that reach every state of this Federation. And our members employ millions of youths across this country- sales assistants, technicians, repairers, loaders, drivers, young people in every market and every street who earn their daily bread from this trade. When the phone trade breathes, millions of Nigerian families breathe with it.
“And that is our greatest fear today. If this policy is implemented as it is, it is those millions of youths — our young people, our apprentices, our boys and girls who have just learnt a trade and opened their first small shop who will lose their jobs. The shops will close. The workshops will go quiet. The apprenticeship that has lifted generations of our young people out of poverty will be broken,” it warned.
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The association, however, clarified that it supports the registration of phones as it would help in weeding out fake phones and making stolen phones become useless.
“We support the registration of phones. We want fake phones out of this country. We want stolen phones to become useless. We want criminals to have nowhere to hide. Any trader who tells you otherwise is not speaking for us,” the group added.