By Abiola Olawale
The Nigerian Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has confirmed that telecom tariffs in Nigeria are set to increase.
However, the Minister noted that the increase will not be by 100% as initially proposed by the telecom operators.
Tijani made this known following a stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja on Wednesday. He added that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) would soon announce the modalities for the tariff adjustment.
The minister also emphasized the government’s intention to balance the protection of consumers with the sustainability of telecom companies to ensure they can continue to invest in Nigeria’s digital economy.
Tijani stated: “We’ve looked at a number of things in terms of how to ensure that can meaningfully contribute to the development of Nigeria.
“Some of those things include implementing the Executive Order around ensuring that we can protect infrastructure around telecoms, driving up significantly local content and importantly, ensuring the sustainability of the companies themselves that as we see inflation across the world that telecommunications companies, we don’t run them down but we allow them to continue to be sustainable so that they can contribute to our economy.
“You have seen over the past weeks that there has been agitation from some of these companies to increase tariffs, requesting for 100% tariff increase. This is not something that, as a government, we will be able to subscribe to at the minute.”
This decision comes in response to the telecom companies’ requests for a significant tariff hike due to what they called rising operational costs influenced by inflation and naira devaluation.
It would be recalled that Telecom companies, including major players like MTN Nigeria, have been advocating for a 100 per cent increase in tariffs for voice, data, and other digital services.
They argued that the demand is largely driven by the need to offset the rising costs of operation due to inflation, currency devaluation, and other economic factors.
Operators also argued that the telecom sector faces sustainability issues without these adjustments.
