THE Federal Government has ordered mobile network operators to stop harassing subscribers, particularly women wearing hijab as they strive to get their SIM card registered in compliance with the directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission.
The Minister of Communications, Barr Adebayo Shittu, who gave the warning in Ibadan at a stakeholders meeting said that decried the way and manner Nigerians, threatening to deal with erring companies henceforth.
Giving the warning through his Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Victor Oluwadamilare, said that the warning following compliant by telecoms subscribers across the country said that women in veil were being treated, sometimes humiliated, by the workers of telecommunications companies nationwide.
According to him, women in pudah dresses were required to remove their veil in public despite the requests by such women that a place should be provided out of public glare for only female officials to attend to them.
He added that “all entreaties failed but rather they were allegedly accused of being Boko Haram agents and they were refused registration after several altercations that ensued in some of the registration centres."
Shittu, who frowned at the development urged the telecommunications companies involved to accord maximum respects to Nigerian, particularly women by respecting their feminine nature and religious disposition saying that the Nigerian Constitution has guaranteed the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion of all citizens and that such right can never be violated by executive or administrative lawlessness and insensitivity.
The Minister noted that Nigerians deserve unreserved apologies from the concerned telecoms companies, saying that it is inhuman and unacceptable to treat Nigerians in a cruel manner, as it is a universal maxim that the rights of even minorities are respected worldwide.
He urged the telecommunications companies to train and retrain their workers of the rights and more civilized ways of treating their customers, adding that sanction may be applied against any erring company that refuse to comply with the policy of the Nigerian Government under the ‘Change Agenda' of President Muhammadu Buhari.
"The inhuman treatment meted out to Nigerians in tge course of the ongoing SIM registration exercise in the country, where subscribers were made to suffer untold hardships, mostly in the scorching sun and unbearable conditions are no longer acceptable," Shittu warned.
The Minister, while lamenting the lackadaisical attitude of the affected companies in the treatment of their subscribers, blamed their conduct on the years of impunity under which they had operated without any serious checks.
"If the experiences of any small country such as Rwanda are anything to go by, where operators play according to the rules and where infractions are usually met with stiff penalties, telecommunications companies in the country have to brace up or face or face the brunt of their inadequacies," he said.
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