Nigeria hikes mobile phone tariffs by 50 percent

LAGOS - Mobile telephone and data subscribers in Nigeria will now have to pay more after the government approved a 50-percent increase in tariffs, as the country battles one of its worst cost-of-living crises in decades.

The industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said earlier this week that it approved the tariff hike "in response to prevailing market conditions".

The tariffs have remained the same in Africa’s fourth-largest economy since 2013, the regulator said.

The hike will heap more pressure on Nigerians already grappling with inflation that sits at a near 30-year high of 34.8 percent.

"This is not the right time to increase the cost of making calls," 51-year-old trader Adebisi Olanrewaju told AFP.

"Things are very expensive and this increase will only add to our problems."

The increase will push the minimum price of telephone calls to 9.6 naira (about $0.0062) per minute from 6.40 naira.

"The approved adjustment is aimed at addressing the significant gap between operational costs and current tariffs while ensuring that the delivery of services to consumers is not compromised," the NCC said in a statement on Monday.

Telecommunications companies in the west African country had initially proposed a 100-percent tariff increase in the face of rising operational costs.

Operators, however, accepted the government’s proposed prices, Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, said.

"The tariff review had become a matter of the survival and sustainability of the sector," he told AFP on Wednesday.

"Without the tariff review, Nigeria’s telecommunications sector would have begun to experience significant service disruptions."

Nigeria’s consumer protection agency, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, said in a statement on Wednesday that the hike should "directly translate into demonstrable and tangible service enhancements".