Nigeria, Africa’s largest mobile phone market, has attracted billions of dollars in telecommunications investment but liberalization and deregulation of the industry have their downside.

Mobile subscribers are inundated with unsolicited text messages from mobile networks and other service providers, often without their permission, according to an editorial in in BusinessDay.

The country’s telecoms industry has attracted more than $25 billion in foreign direct investment in the past 10 years, the editorial said. With about 121 million mobile subscriptions, mobile network operators are competing to lure more subscribers.

Text messages are easy to send. Though short messaging service, or SMS, are
a valuable means of communications, they can also constitute a nuisance, especially when sent without the receiver’s consent. Unregulated, unsolicited texts in Nigeria are sent to millions of subscribers at odd hours in quick succession, but more disturbing is the irrelevance of these messages.

The author questions if these operators take into consideration privacy when bombarding subscribers with unsolicited messages.

Consumers complain they have no way to opt out of unsolicited texts, the author said. A typical example of such messages might be: “The power of colours! Analyse what your favourite colour means or says about you, by texting your colour e.g white to 33550.”

Some subscribers are venting on social media. Many believe that the industry regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission, isn’t listening to their concerns.

They say the regulator has yet to take a firm stance on unsolicited texts despite issuing guidelines that have not been respected.

Recently, the regulator warned service providers to limit unsolicited messages on the networks to between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. — a move considered belated, inadequate and
indecisive. It has not resolved the problem of unsolicited messages, the editorial said.

Sending and receiving unsolicited marketing messages isn’t unique to Nigeria, but the practice is regulated in countries including the U.K. and U.S.

The regulator, telecom operators and other service providers should not take mobile subscribers in Nigeria for granted by allowing “this reckless infringement of their privacy and their right to receive or reject certain communication,” the author said.
Consumer protection agencies are needed to address unsolicited text messages.

“In a free market economy consumers should be allowed to exercise their power of choice and any trend that endangers the exercise of such power should be discouraged,” the author said.