When the roll call of achievers is being made, only those who have truly made positive impacts will be proud to answer, and in answering, people will testify that yes, indeed, they are role models in whatever field they operate. Mrs, Maryam Bayi, the immediate past Director of the Consumer Affairs Bureau at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) obviously belongs to this special class, where impacting society is a driving and motivating force.
For obvious reasons, only a diligent, focused and well-articulated person can manage the consumer affairs of the Nigerian telecom sector successfully. Here is a department that deals with over 140 million subscribers; listening to their complaints, which of course, are in torrents; and ensuring that each subscriber’s problem is resolved with the affected operators. Mrs Bayi during her stint as the Director of CAB took consumerism in the Nigerian telecom sector a notch higher with the NCC’s consumer outreach programmes.
For the time she spent at the helm of Consumer Affairs Bureau for the Nigerian telecom regulator, Mrs Bayi did her best in bringing vibrancy to consumer protection in the industry. In fact, the activities of her department became one of the most visible in the regulator’s programmes with the consistency and deft of management of the NCC’s consumer outreach programme, Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP).
In her quest to ensure that the telecom subscribers are satisfied and derive value for money on all their subscriptions, Mrs. Bayi took discussions at the telecom consumer parliament beyond the issues of service quality to include issues of unsolicited text messages and calls, which are giving subscribers additional headache. She took this up to a point where all operators were issued directives to stop unwanted messages and calls or face sanctions.
While the telcos had blamed it on Value Added Services providers who use the networks to send their messages, the regulator also took this up by issuing warnings to the VAS operators. However, the CAB did not stop there, it compelled the telcos to install filters on their networks to reduce those messages and also directed them to provide ‘opt out’ option on any message they will be sending to the subscribers. These efforts, no doubt, have brought some relief to the consumers.
A professional to the core, Mrs. Bayi in the course of protecting the consumers never lost sight of the constraints faced by the service providers and the way she balanced this attested to her management skill and dexterity. At one of the outreach programmes held recently, the easy going, soft-spoken Mrs. Bayi had noted that “We have operators’ guidelines on how to bring about proper quality service and in the event that these complaints are still going on and therefore we have established two contact centres in Lagos and Abuja and asked them to provide call across the country to ensure that the issues of consumers complaints are dealt with through the automation of our system.”
She, however, added NCC was aware that the service providers face some challenges like the subscription level that had gone up because over 75 per cent of Nigerians now carry telephones. “Also we have power problem though I’m not holding brief for them. Because we are regulator, we have to see both sides of the coin. Also they have challenges with infrastructure like damage to base stations. We are making sure that our enforcement team goes daily to enforce compliance and that consumer issues are resolved once and for all,” she stated.
With her outstanding performance as CAB director, it is not surprising that Mrs. Bayi was in the recent re-shuffle moved to head the Human Capital and Infrastructure Department, another vital unit that is critical in the human capital and infrastructure development of the NCC, which of course, is like the engine room that harnesses the skills and expertise that run the nation’s telecom regulator.
Mrs. Bayi is a graduate of Political Science from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and an Associate member of Chartered Institute of Personnel Management currently concluding an MBA with the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. She has over 30 years’ experience in Administration and Human Resource Management.
In the course of her career, Mrs. Bayi has held various positions which included being a Personnel Manager and Head of department in the New Nigerian Newspapers Ltd and later as an Editorial Board Member from 1981-1990. From 1991-1994 Mrs. Bayi was commissioner for the Kaduna State women’s Commission. She held this position for four years until her appointment as Executive Director for Renaissance Products Ltd from 1995-2000.
Mrs Bayi has been a member of several non-governmental Organisations as Vice President and President respectively of Human Development Foundation of Nigeria, New Nigeria Women Association and Soroptimist International. From 2005 to the present, Mrs. Bayi has been working in the Nigerian Communications Commission where she rose from a Principal Manager to Director within those years. At the NCC Mrs. Bayi received two awards as best Head of Department for 2009 and 2011. Mrs. Bayi was recently awarded an International Award by British Institute of Leadership and Management.
The telecom consumers, whose interest she had protected so well, will definitely miss her as she exits the stage for another competent hand; however, the telecom industry will continue to feel her impact as the Director of another strategic and of equal importance Department of the regulatory body, where indeed, she is charged to develop the human resource that will ensure the telecom regulator remains the best in Africa – all for the sake of the consumer.
We wish her another round of success in the new office.