Former Director General of the National Telecommunications Commission (NATCOM) Sennesie Kallon has said that there wasn’t any real physical monitoring of the international gateway (IGW) operations. The witness was responding to questions during examination in chief on Wednesday 14th August, 2019 as to whether there were any independent monitoring to ascertain what was paid to the government by those managing the IGW was correct. “Whatever international incoming or outgoing traffic minutes were reported to the regulator NATCOM by Sierratel, we totally relied on the statistics of the international call minutes and no third party was actually counting the minutes to ascertain the correctness of the total minutes reported” he said.
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State Counsel Robert Kowa then asked him what his opinion is as an expert in the telecoms industry, that there is likely hood that the government may not have been rightfully benefitting from what it should have. Kallon said “To a point it is true that without an independent monitoring mechanism, minutes reported could be underreported based on the integrity of the reporting entity.” Justice Bankole Thompson then sought for clarification from the witness regarding his last answer, asking “we are seeking the entire fact in matters of this nature in which we are not experts in but we rely on experts like you.” “When you say based on integrity of the reporting entity, supposed I would want to say what you are trying to say is perhaps lack of integrity would I be correct. By your statement you are suggesting that something irregular might have happened and if I am right in that analysis I can contend that under reporting may well be a correlate of lack of integrity” the Judge asked. Kallon told the Judge that, what he actually meant by that was if the person have the honesty and integrity they will report faithfully, but if they underreport that means they do not have integrity, “but My Lord, please take note the word ‘could’” he stressed. Justice Thompson responded saying if the witness wants his answer to remain like then he will leave it as it is. “But when I come to assess the probative value or the credibility of your testimony this will be operating in my mind as to whether I should attach much credibility to it.” Further in his testimony, the witness agreed that he was aware of the several extension request for the monopoly of the IGW especially the one regarding the Cabinet conclusion, but stated that he never saw the Cabinet conclusion document that requested for the first extension. Moreover, based on his knowledge it is NATCOM the regulator that is the deciding agency to extend the management of the IGW.
By Zainab Iyamide Joaque
Thursday August 15, 2019.
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