The Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has expressed regrets over reports of recent incidents of violence across Nigeria as a result of the #ENDSARS protests rocking the country.
ALTON said in a communique signed by its management that the wanton destruction of lives and properties is disheartening and noted that as service providers and employers of labour, its immediate priority is the safety of its staff across the country.
The telecom industry association said it was unfortunate that some of its member operators experienced outages on their networks on Tuesday evening, which still subsists till the moment and declared that none of this was intentional.
“The outages have been compounded by power and other operations-related issues that have occurred across some major routes in Lagos metropolis and other states resulting in congestion of networks and impact on the quality of services.
“Further movement restrictions and the volatility on the streets has compounded the restoration of outages because engineers have not been able to move about to fix the problems,” ALTON said in the communiqué.
It said that at the moment, affected member operators are exploiting all avenues to remedy the situation.
“Engineers are making relentless effort round the clock to resolve issues, while in the interim, efforts are being made to optimize coverage utilising alternative solutions as a stop-gap solution to the most impacted locations,” it said.
ALTON therefore, appealed to subscribers to bear with its members and be patient, adding, “let us remember that we need both voice and data communication especially at this critical time.”
It also appealed to Nigerians who are still at the barricades, to please grant access to its member operator engineers to be able to access the affected locations to restore telecom services.
While regretting the inconveniences caused telecom consumers by this recent violence, ALTON prayed for comfort, peace and strength for all Nigerians.