Two base stations belonging to South Africa’s telecommunication giant, MTN that were decommissioned by the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) in the Federal Capital Territory barely 24 hours ago is already pitching the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) and the environmental regulatory agency at war path.

While the telecom operators are threatening to proceed to court over what they allege as violation of their operational rights by wrongful shutting of their base stations, NESREA on its part is claiming that the base stations set up by the telecommunication company clearly violated regulations guiding the setting up of masts and base stations in the country.

The base stations raising the controversy are situated at Jabi, in Utako district and Oyo Street in Garki district both in Abuja.

Timothy Okeowo, NESREA’s Director of Administration and Finance, had earlier alleged that the agency took the steps to seal up the masts, following complains by residents’ living in the areas as well as failure of MTN to respond to letters written to it about the location of the base stations.

“The residents have persistently complained about the noise emission from the generators which are placed in the middle of a residential compound.

“We wrote to them to do something about it but they ignored us and so we came here to enforce the provision of the law because what they did is unacceptable”.

The development had prompted the leadership of ALTON led by Gbenga Adebayo to storm the office of the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Eugene Juwah on Tuesday, to seek his intervention before heading for the courts.

But unfortunately, the NCC boss maintained a neutral position, saying NESREA is a government parastatal mandated by law to enforce environmental provisions suitable to government and the citizens well-being.

Eugene said NCC’s intervention could only come when the masts are destroyed and that the effect of the destruction affects the quality of service output from the network companies.

At the meeting, he gave indications that he might summon the various leaderships of telecom providers to its headquarters to articulate ways of resolving the persistent network inefficiency currently experienced by mobile phone users.

Saying a task force has been established by the commission to come up with short, medium and long term measures to improve quality service delivery in the telecommunications sector.