The Nation Newspaper

Tag: quality

  • How to ensure quality service delivery, by NCC chief

    How to ensure quality service delivery, by NCC chief

    Expansion of capacity and compelling mobile phoneservice providers to improve are some of the ways to check the incessant problems of service quality in the country.

    Vice President of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), Dr Okechukwu Ugweje, told The Nation in Lagos, that the operators should address the problem.

    DBI is the manpower training institution of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

    Ugweje lamented that poor vservice quality is real, arguing that anybody who thinks it is not an issue is truthful.

    He identified network congestion as one major cause of poor service quality, adding that unless massive investment is carried out to strengthen the network, the issue will remain with the industry.

    “Quality of service is a problem and anybody that tells you it is not a problem is being economical with the truth. One of the problems that cause quality of service issue is network congestion and the only way you can solve it is to expand the network. There are other issues in quality of service. Most of the telcos are aware that they do not have good quality service,” he said.

    He said the recent sealing of mega billion deals with both local and international finance houses is one of the efforts being made by the operators to correct the obvious disequilibrium between infrastructure and subscribers.

    According to him, the NCC is also not resting on its oars as it recently sanctioned operators that failed to live up to the key performance indicators (KPIs) entered into with the NCC.

    “I know quite honestly that some of the telcos are doing something by expanding their network. I cannot point exactly at what they are doing, but I have friends among the telcos and they have told me the type of expansion they are doing. Recently, some of them signed loan deals with banks to raise huge amount of money to expand their networks. I think that is one of their efforts to address quality of service. On the other hand, NCC is also doing something, trying to regulate properly and trying to make these telcos provide good quality of service and as you know, the NCC have had occasions to slam fines on the operators to make them do the right thing. So everybody is working hard but in my own opinion, it is not something that can be overcome in a hurry. I were the chief executive officer of one these companies, I will try to address the issue from the bottom top. Anything that relates to quality of service has to be addressed. The government can actually do more to force them to do something on quality pf service but I am optimistic that quality of service problem will become a thing of the past,” Ugweje said.

     

  • ‘Quality post-gradauate studies improve falling standard’

    ‘Quality post-gradauate studies improve falling standard’

    Vice-Chancellor, Ekiti State University (EKSU), Ado-Ekiti, Prof Patrick Aina, has said the country can overcome the fallen standards of tertiary education if the university system could improve the quality of postgraduate studies.

    Aina, who spoke in Ado-Ekiti at the opening of the 45th meeting of the Committee of Deans of Postgraduate Schools (CDPGS) in Nigerian Universities; said “substandard post-graduate studies would only produce half-baked students.”

    He canvassed improved funding of postgraduate studies to enable the production of required manpower to man the increasing number of universities.

    According to him, this move will support the attainment of the international target of 1:20 teacher-student ratio in the nation’s tertiary institutions.

    Aina said: “With 146 universities (as at the last count) and using the present figures of enrolment, in order to meet the required teacher student ratio of 1:20, we will need to increase the number of academic staff in Nigerian universities from the current level of 26,000 to 50,000 with the minimum qualification of doctorate degree.

    “Postgraduate education is, therefore, to respond positively to the training of postgraduate students for the much-needed high level manpower development of the country,” he said.

    The VC identified factors, including gross underfunding, inadequate and ailing infrastructural facilities, industrial strife and political instability as few of the factors working against attaining improved education standards.

    In his address, the Chairman, CDPGS, Prof. Atiku Yahaya, appealed to the National Universities Commission (NUC) to institute measures to arrest the problems identified in what he called “the postgraduate benchmarks exercise.”

    He advised the NUC to accommodate technocrats in postgraduate education and advocated increased funding for research and teaching in the nation’s universities, saying: “Only this could assure the production of needed quality manpower. T he Dean, School of Postgraduate Studies of EKSU, Prof. Eddy Olanipekun, commended the university management for supporting the meeting which attracted participants from 51 universities accredited by NUC to run postgraduate courses.

     

  • Firm praises Ahmed’s leadership quality

    Firm praises Ahmed’s leadership quality

    The Managing Director of SmartMark Limited, Alhaji Layi Gobir has praised the leadership quality and foresight of Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed of Kwara State.

    He gave the commendation during the inauguration ceremony of the company which opened in Ilorin, Kwara State. SmartMark Limited is Nigeria’s leading distributor of lifestyle and beauty brands.

    Alhaji Gobir, who is indigenous to Ilorin, Kwara State thanked Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed for making this possible.

    He praised Governor Ahmed for his foresight in creating the enabling environment for investment in Kwara State.

    The chairman of the Persianas Group, Mr. Tayo Amusan was also commended for his spirit of enterprise and exemplary business leadership. Persianas Group is the developer of the Kwara Mall.

    The premium luxury Swatch brand which brings with it almost three decades of consistent global delivery of quality had, before now, had upscale stores in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Lagos.

    The Marketing Communications Manager for SmartMark Limited, Segun Ogunleye said in a statement that it is in the company’s bid to give consumers in Ilorin and its environs the opportunity of accessing the premium quality experience that only the Swatch brand provides. Hence the opening of the Swatch store in Ilorin.

    He said: “Consumers who make purchases from the store are given the guarantee of the authentic premium quality luxury Swatch brand. They also automatically qualify for a FastForward loyalty card which entitles them to amazing discounts at subsequent purchases from the store and other FastForward stores nation-wide in addition to enjoying world class, after-sales services for purchased watches at no extra cost.”

    The Swatch brand was established in 1983 in Switzerland. It is being managed and promoted in Nigeria and Ghana by SmartMark Limited, a Lagos Nigeria-based leading distributor of lifestyle and beauty brands. It has retail outlets in major cities in Nigeria and Ghana.

     

  • How free, quality education can work in Nigeria -Afe Babalola

    How free, quality education can work in Nigeria -Afe Babalola

    EMINENT lawyer and founder of the Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), at the weekend, gave a recipe of how free quality education can become a reality in Nigeria.

    He said government at all levels and other stakeholders should partner together in the provision of adequate funding and availability of necessary infrastructure.

    Babalola gave this assertion in a lecture he delivered as part of the activities marking the 32nd convocation ceremony of the Adeyemi College of Education (ACE), Ondo.

    Speaking on the topic entitled “Free Quality Education: Myth or Reality, the renowned legal luminary noted that although free education is laudable and desirable by many people, its practicability could only be achieved by the initiatives taken by the government at all levels.

    The former Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council of the University of Lagos, described the present educational system being practiced under the guise of free education by some states government as not being free when compared with the situation during the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo era in the defunct Western region.

    While Chief Awolowo allocated nearly half of the annual budget of his government to education, the reverse, Babalola noted, is the case in the present era.

  • Quality of service still a mirage

    Quality of service still a mirage

    Subscribers are complaining daily of poor quality of service. All efforts by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCCS) to get service providers to address the problem seem to have failed. Is there no way out? Lucas Ajanaku reports

     

    When she travelled to the east for vacation, she was shocked by the service she got from her service provider. Aside from being unable to make voice calls, all the short message service (SMS) or text messages she sent were never delivered, yet the teleco deducted money for the service.

    “I could not make nor receive calls. Worst still, all the text messages I sent were not delivered, but I paid for each message twice. The first deduction is made as soon the screen of the handset displays ‘message sending’ while another is deducted when the phone dsiplays ‘message sent.’ If it is on-net, that will translate to N10 for one message instead of N5 while if it is off-net, it will tranlate to N20 for one message instead of N10,” the lady who identified herself simply as Silverline said.

    Goodie Olanrewaju, a businessman and resident of Egbeda, a Lagos suburb, is also not happy with the quality of services he gets from his service providers. Compelled to use three different global system for mobile (GSM) communications lines, he still cannot get satisfactory services from his service providers, leading him to feel frustrated.

    “I decided to buy three lines in the hope that when I make on-net calls, I will be free from the hiccups but there is no respite. Many a time I tried to call my wife’s number and my service provider will tell me that the number I dialled was not assigned to any customer,” he lamented, adding that the problem became terrible during the last Yuletide as neither calls nor messages sailed through while money for the messages were deducted with the speed of light.

    These are but very few of the experiences of more than 100 million telecoms subscribers in the country. They work hard and pay through the nose to buy recharge cards for which they hardly get the value because of quality of service issues.

    According to telecoms sector experts who spoke on the issues of quality of service degradation (network reliability, network availability, call drop, call set-up, denial of service and others) being experienced by consumers of mobile services, are caused by network congestion. It causes poor reception, drop calls, poor voice signal as well as blocking of interconnect routes between networks. “Since GSM technology is based time division access, so when one person is talking on the network and there is no space for another call to enter, the other call will be aborted,” an official of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), said on condition of anonymity.

    Poor service quality is not peculiar to Nigeria. Though there could be occasional service disruption in services in matured telecoms markets like that of South Africa, it is common in emerging markets.

    The issue of poor service quality recenty forced the regulator of Ghana’s telecoms sector, the National Communications Authority (NCA) to slam a ban on the sale of SIM cards to MTN Ghana subscribers.

    “Following the recent spate of service disruptions on the MTN network, the National Communications Authority (NCA) has had to engage Scancom Ltd, on several occasions, on the issues of quality of service degradation (i.e. network reliability, network availability, call drop, call set-up, denial of service, etc) being experienced by consumers of mobile services. In spite of these engagements, network performance on MTN continues to deteriorate. Consequently, the NCA has directed Scancom Ltd to, with immediate effect, cease selling and/or adding any new SIM cards/subscribers to MTN network until further notice,” a directive from the NCA read in part.

    The ban which was slammed at the twilight of last year was lifted recently. The NCA said it had monitored MTN’s quality of service and key performance indicators (KPIs), such as call drop rate, call setup time, call congestion rate, and stand-alone-dedicated control channel congestion rate since the suspension began at the end of November 2012.

    The regulator noted that there has been continual improvement in the KPIs compared to their performance prior to the ban. As a result, the NCA lifted the directive of 30 November 2012 banning MTN from selling and adding new SIM cards/subscribers. NCA added that Scancom, owners of MTN Ghana, has actively engaged with it since the ban was implemented to define and implement procedures that would improve customer experience, including 24/7 network monitoring and support services. It is also collaborating with partners in improving response time and has formed a special crisis management team.

    Analysts say the NCC should borrow a laefe from Ghana and see if that will be the right therapy for persistent drop in service quality.

    According to figures released by the NCC, active mobile subscriptions increased by a million as the figure hit 110.3 million at the end of November 2012, up from109.4 million recorded at the end of October.

    The data revealed that GSM communication contributed significantly to the increase in the active subscriber base to 110.3 million. MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat increased their combined subscriptions from 105.9 million in October to 106.8 million at the end of November 2012.

    The sick baby of the industry, the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators such as Visafone, Starcomms, Multi-Links and ZoomMobile further experienced decline in their subscriber base from 3.1 million in October, to 3 million at the end of November 2012.

    In the same vein, fixed wired and wireless network operators also recorded a decline in their meagre active subscriptions from 454,644 lines in October to 432,899 a month after.

    Deolu Ogunbanjo, president, National Association of Telecom Subscribers (NATCOMS) decried the worsening quality of service, arguing that after almost a decade of trial, the operators ought to have got it right now. According to him, the NCC should not pander to the whims and caprices of the operators and other persons, corporate organisations and group of persons that profiteer from promotion and lotteries on the network.

    “The situation has become very embarrassing. We had thought banning promotions and lotteries would help stem the ugly tide. Since it has not, I think what the NCC should do now is to stop further allocation of new number ranges to the operators until such a time that there is a measure of sanity on the network. Each of these number ranges has capacity for ten million subscribers.

    “The NCC should not listen to the various lobbyists that have been putting pressures on the NCC to unban promos and lotteries on the network. The network is for communications and not for lottery. Anybody that wants to play lottery should go play lotto or coupon. Such a person could go per three from four and win whatever jackpot but that should be allowed to ride on the telecoms network again,” Ogunbanjo told The Nation.

    While the NCC imposed a total fine of N1.17billion GSM operators in the country for failing to comply with the minimum standard of quality of service last year, it also banned promos and lotteries on the network.

    While MTN and Etisalat coughed out N360 million each, Airtel and Glo paid N270 million and N180 million respectively to the coffers of the Federal Government as fine.

    Operators have consistently blamed the development on persistent disruption to operation by unscrupulous elements in the society whose stock in trade is fibre cuts. Oyeronke Oyetunde, general manager, Regulatory Affairs, said most of the issues concerned with service quality cannot be divorced from the high incidence of fibre cuts. According to her, MTN alone suffers a minimum of seventy fibre cuts a month. She said the issue of ‘emergency calls only’ that appears when a subscriber is trying to make calls is also a function of network problem.

    She recalled that the telco is cureently undertaking equipment swap to make the network more resilient. The equipment swap will see the telco replace “obsolete” equipment with modern ones.

    Only last week, the telco reported fibre cuts in the Eastern part of the country which led to service outage in the area. It is reported that the fibre cuts are as a result of ongoing road construction of various routes around Aba, Enugu, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Eket, IkotAbasi, Ete, Uyo and Calabar.

    According to Akinwale Goodluck, MTN’s Corporate Services Executive, “In recent times, multiple cuts on our Eastern Fibre Network has impeded the delivery of consistently good quality of service in the East. These particular cuts are as a result of road construction activities, which has impacted many of our sites. However, we suffer over 70 fibre cuts monthly nationwide due to vandalization, sabotage and other criminal activities.Please bear with us as we are doing everything in our control to restore good service.”

    Efforts to get the reaction of NCC failed as calls to Tony Ojobo, director, Public Affairs at the NCC, were not picked neither was the email sent to him acknowledged, let alone replied. But an official of the NCC said the regulator may choose the option of stopping further sale of SIM cards because its mandate is to ensure that every Nigerian gets access to telephoney.

  • Teacher quality and student outcome

    Teacher quality and student outcome

    The four most crucial pieces indispensable to the all-important task of educating our children include the parent, the government, the teacher, and the student. My comments in the last four weeks have focused on the government and its responsibility to educate citizens. Last week, I dealt with the need for a public-private partnership for which the public sector has to provide leadership and direction. Some may be troubled by the disproportionate focus on government in this matter. After all, parents who brought children in the world ought to be responsible for their upbringing, and some are against the provision of free education at any level precisely on the basis of such reasoning. I think that they are wrong but I will not pause to pursue this argument here. Today, I take on one of the other pieces in the puzzle, namely the teacher.

    I should start with a confession. Having been a teacher all my life, I have a bias in favour of the profession because I have not had a sustained experience of any other. One of the greatest joys of a teacher is to be pulled aside by a former student who you now don’t remember and who has apparently done well, and be reminded that you were his or her teacher. This is why, for me, student outcome is the most important affirmation of the teacher’s success. The joy of a teacher, the motivator-in-chief, is the achievement of his or her students. I see myself in the accomplishment of the students that pass through me and that is why I make extra efforts, many times beyond the call of duty and at the expense of personal welfare, to ensure that my students have the quality of instruction from me that puts them in the path of success. This was what I received from my teachers. It is what teaching is about.

    Teaching is often referred to as the noble profession. If education is about molding the nation, the teacher is the most important molder and the nation’s children are the clay. If we continue with the metaphor of the potter and the clay, it is instructive to note that the quality of the pottery depends on the quality of the potter. Is the potter knowledgeable in what she does? Is she patient? Is her aesthetic sense so trained that she appreciates beauty and pursues it? Then the works of her hands should be of high quality. So it is with the teacher as the potter of the nation.

    As I went through my first training as a Grade III teacher, I was exposed to a large number of literatures on teacher preparation. In 1962, Randall Butisingh, a life-long teacher, wrote that a “teacher must know that he or she is teaching, not only a subject, but a child. A good teacher, by his or her methods will be able to motivate the pupil, waken his interest, and arouse his curiosity. Teachers can make learning pleasant. They must exhibit energy, enthusiasm and cheerfulness, and never cease to learn themselves. A teacher who ceases to learn becomes irrelevant.” This last point cannot be stated more forcefully. And the question is,” what is the state of our teacher preparation?” And “what is the quality of our teacher cadre?”

    If we take education seriously, and if the future success of our children, and thus of our nation is important to us, then it must be reflected in the emphasis that we place on teacher preparation and teacher quality. This is not just a task for the government; it is equally the task of the teacher’s union. And it is the focus of attention and efforts in nations that we have considered advanced in the matter of educational attainments.

    The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) recently released a report on teacher preparation and teacher quality. In her foreword to the report titled “Raising the Bar: Aligning and elevating teacher preparation and the teaching profession,” Randi Weingarten, AFT President comes out forcefully against what she refers to as a “common rite of passage, whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms, expected to figure things out, and left to see if they (and their students) sink or swim. Such a haphazard approach to the complex and crucial enterprise of educating children is wholly inadequate. It’s unfair to both students and teachers, who want and need to be well-prepared to teach from their first day on the job.” In the case of this country, we are worse off. For what we do is toss our classroom keys to anyone—trained or not—and we leave them to see if they and their students sink or swim. How many of our classroom teachers are trained teachers? How many have adequate (not to talk of superior) knowledge of the subjects they teach?

    It is interesting to note that the AFT is the professional organisation of teachers in the United States. It doesn’t see itself as just a trade organisation only interested in the struggle for the welfare of its members. It also recognises that as a professional organisation, it has to worry about its end product—the student outcome. This is why it insists on “raising the bar” of the teaching profession. Consider the following recommendations from the organisation: First, it recommends that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards must take the leading role in bringing together all stakeholders to define a “rigorous entry bar for beginning teachers, just as it has established a process for becoming an accomplished board-certified teacher.”

    Second, the AFT recommends an entry bar for the profession that must include “rigorous preparation” and “a demonstration of teaching ability through performance assessment.” Third, it recommends that the “process of establishing the bar and ensuring its professional standards are maintained should involve all stakeholders but be driven by teachers and teacher educators.” In other words, what AFT is recommending for the teaching profession is akin to what lawyers and physicians have in place for their professions. No lawyer is allowed to practice unless he or she passes the Bar. No doctor is allowed to practice unless he or she is certified by the Board of Physicians.

    The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has the responsibility to move the teaching profession forward not by standing in the way of reasonable standards but by leading the effort to improve teacher standard and thus student outcome. Some recent stories on positions taken by the NUT against specific actions of state governments suggest a rethinking of the organisation on its role as the champion of the noble profession. In one such story, the Bauchi State chapter of the organisation went on strike for three weeks in protest against the decision of the state government to “send about 5,000 unqualified teachers back to school.” If it was established that these 5,000 were truly unqualified, and they were being sent back to school for proper qualification, why would an organisation that promotes quality teaching protest such a decision? And why would the union stand against continuous evaluation and assessment of the classroom effectiveness of teachers through periodic testing?

    Surely, governments need to work with the NUT and other professional organisations in coming up with policy measures for the improvement of teaching in our schools. But in the final analysis, it is the responsibility of the government, as the custodian of the public trust, to promote quality education through appropriate policies to ensure successful students outcome.