Subscribers of mobile network
providers in the country are brazenly ripped off on a daily basis with
no protection from the relevant regulatory bodies Adedayo Adejobi writes
Aunty Matilda is getting on in years but
remains fiercely independent; she lives on a fixed income but in the
same home she’s had for half-a-century. Sadly, many members of her
family have passed away and those who are alive are dispersed around the
country. Making matters worse, she is having a harder time making sense
of her never-ending stream of bills, especially her mobile phone bills.
This reporter regularly visits Aunty
Matilda to keep her company and to help her pay her bills. When I
arrived one morning recently, she was in a state. She had attempted to
place a long-distance call through her mobile network provider but found
that her service had been summarily stopped. If this had been the first
time that this had occurred, I would have assumed it was a technical
screw-up and accepted it as an inconvenience. Unfortunately, this was
the umpteenth time the service had been arbitrarily stopped and a
distraught Aunty Matilda said, “Enough, already,” and ended service with
the mobile network provider.