Executive Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Dambatta on Wednesday stated that the Commission recently conducted a successful fifth-generation spectrum auction which generated over $500 million for the Federal Government.
He also unveiled plans for the deployment of technology to verify annual operating levies (AOL), tax and other payments by network service providers to the Federal Government.
Professor Dambatta made this known in Abuja during an investigative hearing held at the instance of House of Representatives’ Ad-hoc Committee investigating the duplication of functions of Agencies of the Federal Government.
He said: “We are currently going to deploy a technology solution. We call it Revenue Assurance Solution.
“We have finished signing the MOU with the Consultant that is going to do this deployment, so that we can independently verify that the amount of annual operating levy (AOL) they are paying and other taxes are indeed what they are supposed to pay and therefore not shortchange the NCC or government when it comes to payment of taxes.
“We, through what we call annual operating levy, run our operations, pay our staff salaries and allowances and even provide resources for intervention in the diverse areas of information and communication technology in the various parts of the country.
“These interventions are verifiable. There is no state of the federation that we don’t provide interventions in the diverse areas of ICT. We also provide training. We would like to ensure our citizens are ICT savvy by embracing this important technology because that is what the whole is doing.
“That is what we can do in order to ensure our citizens are socially and economically transformed to change the way they are doing things, the way they collaborate and innovate.
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“We have records available to show that we have been contributing a lot to the coffers of the government and a very good example is when we did that successful 5G auction. The proceeds from the auction goes to the coffers of the government.
“We don’t normally take anything. It is gazetted that whatever we sell spectrum, we do not keep the money, we normally transfer this money to the consolidated revenue fund of the government,” he said.
Speaking earlier, Chairman of the Ad hoc Committee, Hon. Victor Mela, observed that the Committee had a mandate to investigate duplication of functions and counter productivity of agencies for possible merger.
Some of the agencies under consideration were Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBS) and the Nigerian Communication Satelite (NigComSat), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Galaxy Backbone, National Boundary Commission and Border Communities Development Agency among others.
He also underscored the importance of research, revenue generation and service delivery as critical conditions in the consideration process for merging or scrapping agencies of government.
Hon. Mela averred that it is not about having many agencies with so many Director-Generals that does not deliver the required services to Nigerians but about productivity.
“The Ad-hoc Committee is critically looking at these agencies, their existence and looking at possible synergies and mergers of these agencies to give effective service to Nigerians.
“One area is research, second is revenue generation and thirdly is regulatory functions and service delivery and at the end of the day, this is what Nigerians want.
“It is not about when you go to any agency, you see this man seated there on a table and services are not being offered there,” he said.
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