BEING A SPEECH PRESENTED BY THE
EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIRMAN OF NIGERIAN COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (NCC), PROF. UMAR
G. DANBATTA, TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2016 DURING THE COURTESY VISIT
TO THE GOVERNOR OF KADUNA STATE, MALAM NASIR EL-RUFAI
The
Executive Governor of Kaduna State,
His
Excellency, Malam Nasir El-Rufai
The
Deputy Governor,
Commissioners,
Other
top officials here present,
Gentlemen
of the press
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
My
team and I have looked forward to this visit for quite some time. And despite
several postponements as a result of your very busy and crowded schedule, we
are glad to be here at last today.
Like
the saying goes, ‘Charity begins at home’.
This is so, primarily because of the place and history of the city and
by extension the State.Let me thank you, your Excellency for this opportunity
to visit Kaduna and to express our warm regards for your person and the
institution that you represent.
Why we are here.
Your
Excellency, we are here for a number of reasons, one of which is that Kaduna is
home to many of us.But primarily, we are here to share with you our vision and
mission for a better Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
environment and to share with you our modest contribution to this growth.
There
is no need to tell you how much impart ICT has made on the economy since 2001,
when the revolution began. But suffice
it to say that the Commission has lived up to its mandate of connecting the
country and serving the underserved and unserved areas of our great nation.
We
are more than prepared to take the revolution further by the initiatives we
have put in place in our 8-point agenda that will guide us in the next five
years.
Although
so much has been said about the 8-point agenda elsewhere, let me say again for
the purpose of emphasis, that, the agenda has as its flagship the promotion of
broadband internet connectivity so much that by the year 2018, broadband
penetration will increase from its current 10 percent to 30 percent or more.The
process for this has begun. Early in 2014, we licensed Bitflux Consortium for
the 2.3GHz frequency. A few days ago,
they began to offer commercial services.
Early
in 2015, we licensed two Infrastructure Companies (Infracos) for Lagos and
North Central. And there are five more of such licenses for North West, North
East, South West, South East and South South waiting to be grabbed by bidders.We
are also in the process of concluding the auction of 2.6GHz Spectrum where 14
slots are up for auction.
Once
these are completed and operators roll out services, the slow speed internet
connection experiences now will be a thing of the past.
Your
Excellency, because of the limited time we have to share with you today, we may
not be able to reel out to you all that we are doing.
Our
Worries
Just
before I assumed duties on August 4, 2015, I used to read about the series of
problems plaguing the telecom sector in general and operators in particular.
There
have been recurring cases of multiple taxation especially at State levels which
operators have to bear.
There
have also been cases of Right of Way (RoW) whereby operators have to deal with
this at different levels – from local council to the state level.
Besides these, there have been incessant
vandalism of telecom equipment and theft of opticfibre cables in various states
of the federation.
Base stations have not been spared as many
operators have had their base stations shut down by some state government
agencies for one debt or the other.
These are real issues that require pragmatic
solutions if quality of services are to improve beyond where it is
today.Certain agencies in some states have also threatened to shut down operators’
facilities in these states.
Sadly, your Excellency, despite the
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the former Communications Minister
with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) to address these challenges, the
covenant is not respected
The
Way Out
Your Excellency, we have come to enlist
your support by prevailing on your brother Governors to have an understanding
with the situation.
We do this because of our firm belief in
you as a technocrat with a very good grasp of the importance of ICT in national
development and how this will crystalise in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of our
dear nation, Nigeria.
If you do this for us, your Excellency, posterity will remember you and
Nigerians will celebrate you.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Prof. Umar G.
Danbatta, FNSE
Executive
Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, NCC
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