Indications emerged on Thursday that the Federal
Executive Council at its meeting that ran into late night on Wednesday had
approved the merger of the Nigerian Communications Commission and Nigerian
Broadcasting Commission.
The implication of this is that the two government
agencies will be collapsed into a stronger entity to regulate the Information
Communications Technology industry in the country.
The approval followed calls for the merger of the two
agencies in the true spirit of ICT convergence and was central to the advocacy
for the establishment of the Ministry of Communications Technology.
The ministry was established a year ago with the NCC,
Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, Nigerian Information Technology
Development Agency, Nigerian Postal Service and Galaxy Backbone under it.
However, the NBC remained outside the purview of the ministry.
In view of this, it was gathered that President
Goodluck Jonathan, at the FEC meeting on Wednesday, gave an approval in
principle for the merger of NCC and NBC because a new Act would be required to
give the new body legal authority.
The Communications Week had
reported that the Ministry of Communications Technology put forward profound
argument for the merger, which impressed the President.
It was reported that the ministry argued that opening
up frequencies locked away by broadcasting stations would widen telecoms
operators’ offering of voice and data services and, consequently, increase
penetration, especially in the rural areas.
“The Ministry of Communications Technology pointed to
the digitisation programme and insisted that streamlining the regulators would
be a requisite to achieving the country’s target of fully migrating to digital
broadcast by 2015,” the FEC source said.
It was gathered that Information ministry officials
argued against the merger during the meeting, pointing at infrastructural
challenges as well the need to keep the broadcast industry under close watch to
guide against abuse.
Jonathan was said to have brushed aside strong
objections to the merger by the Ministry of Information and gave his nod for
the plan.
The President was said to have promised to look at the
procedures closely to guard against the problems the merger was seeking to
eliminate.
Experts said the proposed merger would position the ICT
industry as an economy driver, while cutting down waste.
The new draft National ICT Policy, released in January
2012, seeks to bring together all related technology policies under a single
statute by overhauling outdated regulations to ensure better management of the
country’s dramatic growth in computer and Internet usage over the past decade.
Under the policy, the government intends to create
legal and institutional frameworks, while targeting improvement of broadband
access, investment, research and development.
It also plans to facilitate legislation for cyber
crime, ethical and moral conduct, privacy, copyright, intellectual property
rights, piracy and e-transactions through the draft policy.