My social media handles are classrooms, and I like to engage as the questions come. Question: Why do you want the Nigerian government to subsidize or keep subsidizing postal service, petrol and education?

My Response: Let me begin by drawing cases from the United States (I can use any developed economy). I have lived in a red state (Alabama), blue states (MD and MA) and swing state (PA), and I have seen how cities advance. In the ranking of the top 20 American best universities, more than 80% are in blue democratic cities. Also, the largest American cities are also majorly blue cities. More so, in per capita income ranking, blue states will pick the top five while the red ones will pick the bottomn five. So, there is a statistical validation that blue states outperform economically.

So, what do blue American cities and states do? They build economic platforms faster, larger and better than their red counterparts. They have the best school systems, best transport networks, etc. With those infrastructural platforms, communities and opportunities emerge. 

Education: there will not be a generation of knowledge workers if Nigeria does not subsidize education. For all the attacks on California, with its world-class university ecosystem, innovation happens therein and everyone comes there to build the next phase of technology. Nigeria’s most important infrastructure is education. More than 70% of people reading this will not have gone to universities in Nigeria without that subsidy. In FUTO, I won multiple university scholar awards and I experienced the beauty of an amazing Nigeria, helping my education through broad subsidies and scholarships.  For me, Nigeria worked for me. Education subsidy is a catalytic infrastructure for a nation; do not remove it.

Postal service: Nigeria needs to link the urban and rural areas so that commerce can happen at scale. The postal system has a role. In the US, for the last 20 years, the US postal service has recorded losses and they’re fine with it.  If Nigeria fixes corruption, we can build a functioning NIPOST that will lose $100 million but can power a new market of $50 billion which we can tax to make $1 billion. 

Fuel: I have already explained my point here. You can add that as Europe subsidies renewable energy, and EV cars, they’re using subsidies to rebuild their economies. Nigeria’s problem is not subsidies but CORRUPTION in our subsidy execution. We must kill corruption to advance as a nation.

My Conclusion: Nigeria needs to do strategic subsidies, effectively and efficiently. We cannot be the “red states” of Africa in a time when Rwanda and South Africa are building modern platforms for their futures. America created one a few decades ago when it decided to subsidize ecommerce. Yes, when US senators voted to not burden online stores with collecting sales taxes, etc, it knew many Americans would move online, leaving physical stores which must continue to collect taxes, to fade.

That dishwasher is $1,000 and sales tax is 7%. If you buy on Amazon, you pay only $1,000 while if you go to a physical store, you pay $1,070. With free shipping, most moved online. Then, when the US government felt that those online stores had matured, they removed those subsidies, and now all stores collect the taxes! If Amazon had been left to battle the free market, it would not have succeeded! It got a lot of help along with many online stores because the US wanted to create a new sector! 

Nigeria needs to create new sectors, and subsidies are vehicles which nations use to make such happen. Ford, Tesla, GM, etc are getting huge funds as the US races to build modern infrastructure for the electric vehicle future. Intel, AMD, ADI, etc are getting massive funds from the government to rebuild their semiconductor competitiveness.

Nigeria’s Problem is Not Fuel Subsidies

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced that telecommunications companies (Telcos) are authorized to deactivate inactive subscribers from their networks after six months of inactivity.

This is a key provision outlined in the newly approved guidelines for Telcos by the NCC, which will be implemented soon.

The new NCC guidelines, titled, ‘Draft Quality of Service Business Rules’, stipulate the minimum quality and standards of service, associated measurements, and key performance indicators for measuring the quality of service.

Per the guidelines, if a subscriber remains inactive for an additional six months, there is a possibility of losing their number, unless there is a network-related issue preventing the activation of the Registered Glove Enclave (RGE).

“A subscriber’s line may be deactivated if it has not been used, within six months, for a Revenue Generating Event (RGE), and if the situation persists for another six months, the subscriber may lose their number, except for a network-related fault inhibiting an RGE,” the guidelines stipulated.

Recycling of inactive phone numbers has remained a big subject in Nigeria, following the arrest of one Anthony Okolie, a Delta State-based trader, by the Department of State Services (DSS), for using a SIM previously owned by Hanan Buhari, the president’s daughter.

Based on the new guidelines, the NCC said that telcos have the authority to reassign dormant SIM cards without recourse to the previous owners, as long as the inactivity falls within the stipulated period of six months.

For subscribers who wish to recover their lines after it might have been recycled, the commission said they must provide “proof of good reason for absence and are at liberty to request for line parking.”

In the guidelines, the NCC announced other regulations, including alert etiquette.

The commission stated that during credit alert notifications while on a call, telecommunications companies (telcos) should provide “a single short-beep” to the call initiator two minutes before the call is set to end, and another beep at 30 seconds before termination.

The NCC also said that if a call is unable to last for up to 30 seconds, a low credit announcement should be played when the call is initiated.

These new guidelines have been introduced per Section 57 of the NCC Act, allowing stakeholders to provide their input on the policy.

Additionally, the NCC directed in the guidelines, that telcos ensure that customers are attended to within 30 minutes upon their arrival at any of the telcos’ service centers nationwide.

“For customer care centers, waiting time to be physically attended to by relevant staff at customer care centers is 30 minutes. The licensee shall provide means of measuring the waiting time, starting from the time of arrival at the premises,” the guideline said.

The commission also said telcos must ensure that customers are hastily attended to when they call a helpline or visit their providers’ offices.

“Lines should not be more than three times; maximum number of rings before a call is answered by either an IVR machine or a live agent should not be more than five; and where a customer decides to speak to a live agent, the maximum duration allowable on the queue/IVR should be five minutes before answer,” the NCC said.

The regulator added: “In exceptional cases where a live agent may be unavailable within five minutes to answer the call, a customer should be given an option to hang up to be called back within a maximum time of 30 minutes. Customer care lines that can be accessible through 21 free access numbers and if one number, then it should accommodate multiple other network calls at the same time.”