With N91.8bn Facility Damages in Five Months, Insurers Declare Telecoms as High Risk Sector

Emma Okonji

Insurance companies have declared telecoms sector as high risk sector, following the frequent telecoms facility damages across the country in the past five months, calculated to reach N91.8 billion.

Telecoms operators under the aegis of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), had at the weekend, released a statement about the incessant and wanton vandalism of telecoms facilities across the country since March this year.

Worried about the frequency of destruction and the negative impact on the telecoms sector and the Nigerian economy, the Chairman of ALTON, who is the spokesperson for telecoms operators in Nigeria, Gbenga Adebayo, told THISDAY in a telephone interview that the continuous vandalism of telecoms facilities have become a source of worry to insurance companies that insured telecoms facilities in the country. According to him, some insurance companies have declared telecoms sector as high risk sector, as a result of the incessant damages on telecoms facilities, and they are no longer willing to continue to bear the cost of such wanton damages.

Adebayo said the recent destruction of telecoms facilities across the country started in March this year, with high frequency of occurrence, recording a maximum of five telecoms sites being vandalised on a daily basis since March.

He explained that the vandalism started in March after telecoms operators had commenced new investments in telecoms facility expansion to improve service quality, following the approval of 50 per cent hike in telecoms tariff in January this year by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

According to him, most of the vandalised sites are solar sites and it costs between N80 million and N120 million to fully install a solar site.

Since five sites are vandalised per day across the country and the facilities stolen, it is estimated that telecoms operators lose as much as N600 million to telecoms site vandalism and theft every day, since it costs up to N120 million to install one solar site. Going by the calculation, it also means that telecoms operators will lose as much as N91.8 billion by the end of this July, since there are 153 days from March to July, being the five months of wanton vandalism and theft of telecoms facilities.

The loss may exceed N91.8 billion after July, if the situation is not controlled by security operatives, as requested by telecoms operators.

Adebayo said the vandalism and theft of telecoms facilities have continued unabated because the vandals have a ready market to sell stolen telecoms facilities, insisting that such available market is the solar industry market, where those that deal on solar equipment are willing to buy stolen items.

Adebayo said: “Social miscreants attack telecoms sites, maim and sometimes kill security guards, and they vandalise and steal telecoms facilities. There are a few things that are of interest to them on the site.They include all the power cables andall the elements of cables that are on the site; the rectifier on the site; the batteries; and the solar cells.That’s one line of vandalism. Another line of vandalism is the destruction and theft of fibre optic cables.”

For the first line of vandalism, which has to do with theft of power cables, rectifiers, batteries and solar cells, Adebayo said the stolen facilities were sold in one direction, and to one market, the solar and inverter market.

“So when they steal the power cable on site, when they steal the rectifier and they steal the batteries, they are sold to only one type of market, inverter market.So these home inverters and office inverters and solar stations that you see,some of them are elements that were stolen from telecoms sites. Again, they steal diesel from sites, as much as 30 litres, 50 litres, and 100litres, but that is for the short-term economic benefit,”Adebayo further said.

Speaking about the impact of the vandalised and stolen telecoms facilities, Adebayo told THISDAY that because telecoms base stations are powered on three types of energy, mostly diesel, solar, and wind, telecommunications signals are cut off, whenever a site or base station is attacked and vandalised, leading to weak transmission of telecoms services in the entire community that is connected to the base station.

“When this happens on a site that connects multiple stations, which we call the hub site, the implication is that all the on-work stations will be affected, and service quality will be affected,” Adebayo said.

Adebayo also said there could be long-term service outage, because it would take longer time to restore telecoms services, if the site is located in remote and areas of high security risk.

“There is a site that’s not far from the federal capital territory that has been vandalised 10 times this year alone. So, the decision that has now been taken about that site is that unless there is security guarantee, nobody is going there to restore service,” Adebayo further said.

He appealed to the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) and all security agents in the country to come to the rescue of telecoms operators, before the entire telecoms facilities in the country are completely vandalised.