The Federal Government has been asked to repeal the Tax and Levy Amended Order 2015 for the Executive Order of Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria will have any beneficial effect on the telecommunications sector. The Amended Order that was signed by Mrs. Ngozi Okonji-Iwaela, former minister of Finance in the last administration is said to tilt towards ensuring the sector going down in no time.

This was contained in a statement made recently by the Association of Licenced Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON). The statement signed by ALTON Chairman, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, noted that the Order as signed in 2015 has created a lot of confusion in the taxes and levies regime and made the telecoms environment hash for business, contrary to the Federal Government executive order on Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria.

According to him, “The telecommunications industry has been the best customer centric sector, where issues pertaining to subscribers are taken very seriously by both the operators and the regulator, and despite all challenges there has not for once been an outage compare to other sectors, where you are put on estimated bills and inconsistence in flight schedules that have made several people miss appointments and valued meetings just to mention few.”

Adebayo also reacted to reports making the rounds that there was a face-off between ALTON and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) following the outcome of last week’s meeting held between both bodies, saying there was no face-off at all between them.

He said: “There was no face-off between NCAA and ALTON and its members. Although we need clarification on the charges on aviation mast height clearance, this led to the agreement at the meeting to form an advisory committee which comprises NCAA and ALTON representatives. Our members are responsible corporate citizens of the country and natural partners in progress that follow due processes.”

He further explained: “At the meeting, it was cleared that all taxes charged by the NCAA are statutory as it was in the NCAA Act. The issues of aviation mast height clearance was discussed at the meeting because our members are being charged across the country whether close to the airports or not, and the agency tried to increase some of the charges as reported to us by our members and we took it up with NCAA. ALTON and its members were informed that the essence of the Aviation Height clearance is purely for safety, because they have to identify the routes to guide the Pilots in navigation. We were informed that there are categories of aircraft, big, medium and small, also the choppers and the drones are part of their responsibilities and these are not limited to telecoms infrastructure but to banks, radio stations and high rise building.”

On his part, Capt. Muhtar Usman, director general of NCAA, said charging across board was necessary given that there are lots of airstrips and helipads across the country.