MRA Condemns NCC’s Directive to Telecoms’ Operators to Shut down Services in Zamfara

By Wale Igbintade

A group, Media Rights Agenda (MRA), has condemned the directive by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to telecommunications’ companies to immediately shutdown all telecommunications services in Zamfara State as a result of the “encompassing security situation” in the state.

It described the measure as an unwarranted and unjustifiable interference with the rights to freedom of expression and access to information.

In a statement issued in Lagos yesterday, the MRA Communications Officer, Mr. Idowu Adewale, alleged that the NCC, which is supposed to be a regulatory agency, has increasingly become a tool in the hands of the federal government for to indiscriminately violate the rights of Nigerians.

The statement added: “Such purported exercise of power without regard to deny communications services not only to the residents of Zamfara State, but also to other people elsewhere who have family members, friends, loved one as well as other social or business relations in the state. They denial of the right to communicate with others without judicial or any other form of independent oversight cannot be justified under any circumstance.

“There is no evidence anywhere in the world that shutting down communication services, including access to the internet and telephone communication, helps improve security, prevent terrorist attacks, or stop them. Indeed, commonsense and available evidence indicate that the more likely result from such a measure is that the operations of security agencies and emergency services will be thwarted by the obstruction of vital public communications during periods of terrorists attacks when their services are most needed.”

The statement observed that there was already ample support for this proposition from the Nigerian experience when in 2013, the government also shut down telecommunications services in three states in the North-east-Adamawa, Borno and Yobe-to ostensibly disrupt Boko Haram’s communication capacity and its ability to use telecommunications to plan, coordinate and launch terrorist attacks.

The group recalled that “the experience then was that not only did terrorist attacks by Boko Haram insurgents continued throughout the period when telecommunication services were cut off, but in many instances, the attacks actually appeared to have intensified.”

Besides, the statement cited a study conducted entitled: ‘Silencing Boko Haram: Mobile Phone Blackout and Counterinsurgency in Nigeria’s Northeast region’, which was published in an international security journal known as ‘Stability: International Journal of Security & Development’, Volume 4(1).

According to him, the study clearly showed that the disruption of telecommunications services was counterproductive as it caused a lot of frustration and anxiety among the people in the area as well as heightened their sense of insecurity because they were unable to determine what is going on around them, could not access important news and information, could not reach emergency services and could not check on their loved ones.

The group, therefore, called on the NCC to immediately rescind its directive to the telecommunications companies, and urged security agencies to find more innovative and effective ways to address the security situation that are nonetheless consistent with the government’s human rights obligations and the rights of people as a condition for protecting them, which is not only abhorrent but itself a violation of human rights norms and principles.