The Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation (CADEF) has called for reforms in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector, demanding improved network reliability, transparent billing, faster resolution of failed transactions and more effective complaint-handling mechanisms.
The organisation said the country’s growing telecommunications market must deliver better services and stronger consumer protection, rather than being judged by subscriber numbers alone.
The Executive Director of CADEF, Prof. Chiso Ndukwe-Okafor, made the call on Tuesday in Lagos while presenting a lead paper at the 95th Telecom Consumer Parliament organised by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
Citing the NCC’s August 2026 industry statistics, Ndukwe-Okafor said Nigeria had 197.4 million active telephony subscriptions and 158.5 million internet subscriptions.
She, however, cautioned that the figures did not necessarily represent individual users and could not establish whether subscribers enjoyed reliable connectivity, understood their bills or received satisfactory assistance when problems occurred.
According to her, the real test of telecommunications service delivery lies in whether calls connect and remain connected, customers receive the airtime and data they pay for, and complaints result in actual remedies.
She identified three critical areas requiring attention: reliable connections, clear billing and accessible complaint-resolution channels.
On network quality, Ndukwe-Okafor called for more detailed, publicly accessible information on service performance in specific locations, including dropped calls, service availability, internet speeds, latency and the duration of network interruptions.
She said national averages could conceal persistent connectivity problems in particular neighbourhoods and rural communities, making localised performance reporting necessary to help consumers understand the quality of services available to them.
She also proposed that telecommunications operators provide timely information during major outages, indicating the affected areas, the cause of the disruption where known, expected restoration times and subsequent updates.
Where the same locations experience repeated service failures, she recommended that operators develop corrective action plans with clear deadlines, assigned responsibilities and mechanisms for verifying improvements.
On billing transparency, the CADEF executive director called for standardised, plain-language information on tariffs and data bundles to enable consumers to understand the price, allowances, validity periods, automatic renewal conditions and cancellation procedures before making payments.
She said important information should not be scattered across advertisements, purchase menus and lengthy terms and conditions.
Addressing complaints about data depletion, Ndukwe-Okafor proposed that operators provide more detailed usage information, including opening balances, purchases, consumption, expiry, promotional allocations and closing balances.
She said consumers should receive practical explanations when they dispute their data usage, while operators should investigate such complaints fairly and provide evidence-based responses.
On failed airtime and data transactions, she said consumers should not be left to determine whether a bank, payment intermediary or telecommunications operator was responsible when their accounts had been debited without the services purchased being delivered.
She proposed a common transaction-tracking system that would allow transactions to be traced across institutions, alongside clear responsibility for communicating with customers, transparent refund timelines and automatic corrections where records establish that a transaction failed.
Ndukwe-Okafor also called for improved complaint-resolution mechanisms, particularly for older consumers, persons with disabilities and subscribers who lack smartphones or reliable internet access.
She warned that complaint channels could remain inaccessible to some consumers if they depended exclusively on voice calls, smartphone applications or online forms that were difficult to use.
The consumer advocate further urged the NCC and operators to distinguish between complaints that had merely been acknowledged, those that had received substantive responses and those that had been genuinely resolved.
She said a complaint should not be considered resolved simply because an agent had responded or a case had been marked as closed.
To strengthen accountability, Ndukwe-Okafor proposed a public action register for the Telecom Consumer Parliament, containing the commitments made by stakeholders, the institutions responsible for implementation, agreed timelines and progress updates.
She also recommended that the NCC establish a common complaint-reporting framework with relevant regulators and industry operators to improve the comparability of complaints data and resolution outcomes.
Among the proposed measures was the publication of an initial consumer-experience progress scorecard within six months, subject to the adoption of the recommendations.
She said the scorecard should assess progress in service quality, billing disputes, failed transactions, accessibility and consumer satisfaction.
Ndukwe-Okafor stressed that consumer protection should be assessed by the quality of the outcome delivered to subscribers, rather than the number of complaints recorded as closed.
She urged stakeholders to adopt measurable commitments, assign responsibility for implementation and make progress available for public scrutiny.
The 95th Telecom Consumer Parliament was held under the theme, “Enhancing Consumer Experience: Strengthening Service Quality and Consumer Protection in Nigeria’s Digital Economy.”
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