The Executive Commissioner at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Mr Sunday Dare, one of the nominees for ministerial appointment, by President Mohammadu Buhari, was impressive at the ongoing ministerial nominees screening by the Senate.
He answered several questions put before him by the senators, who lined up to grill him, during which he took the lawmakers through the country’s ICT vision.
He was one of the few that was grilled by the senators who had asked most of those who came before them to take a bow and go.
Dare’s Oyo state senators who had wanted to ask that he enjoys the privilege of ‘take a bow and go’ argued that they would let the candidate from their state face the senators because they were confident he would prove himself. Truly, Dare, who could be drafted to the Communications Ministry, did not disappoint.
He introduced himself by telling the senators what he had done as a fighter for democracy and the parliamentary institution, saying that his work at Tempo and Tell Magazines in the days of late General Sanni Abacha was also key to the achievement of the much desired democracy.
He told the senators that his work at the NCC has seen Nigeria telecoms contribution to the GDP rise from 9.1 % in 2016, when he joined the Commission to today’s level of 10.1 %.
“I have worked with critical stakeholders in the area of digitization … and since we live in an era of digitalisation where every area of our lives is being digitized the NCC work hard to ensure that all aspects of our national life is digitalised”.
“The more we have penetration of broadband the more we would improve our national status and empower the youth”, he added.
NCC, he said is focusing on regulation for development, that would bring economic growth and it is ensuring that the sector is not over regulated.
He said though “we have achieved 33.1 % in broadband penetration, we have our eyes to reach 70% within the next three years. We want to reach 774 local governments with broadband and to put Nigeria on the pedestal to use 5G to enhance e-government and improve digital life”.
He said the NCC was working with the telecommunication companies and the security agencies to track kidnappers and has achieved a lot on that area. He explained that the NCC has a SIM card registration data base that contains all the biometrics and other necessary information. The Commission he said carries a periodic verification and scrubbing of SIM card data to ensure information given is accurate.
According to him NCC is working with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), which has the equipment for scrubbing, adding that 50 million SIMs have been scrubbed and verified and returned to the telecommunication agency.
According to him, NCC has captured over 85% of subscribers, working is to overcome the challenges of simultaneously monitoring over 150 million subscribers on the national network, for surveillance purposes.
He said the Commission regularly passes information, from the telecos to the security agencies on kidnappers, which they have used successfully to fight crime in the country and it was working on establishing a more robust platform for network monitoring.
Dare said he would not disclose all the details of the Commission’s work with the security agencies.
The country, he said, was working on a national citizen data base, through a directive from the federal executive council that all agencies send their data base to the NIMC for appropriate warehousing and management.
Responding to Senator Ovie Omo-Agege who asked if he made any suggestion to the Commission on how to stipulate more stringent penalty for telecos who violate regulatory rules, Dare said the NCC was currently carrying out an audit of all the telecos, in a bid to ascertain if there was any breach of regulatory requirements in line with SIM registration.
Three work groups, he said were currently working on the assignment to verify if the telecos have registered all the SIMs in their networks, saying violators could face the sort of fine that MTN faced in 2015.
He also said that the NCC has begun the policy of spectrum trading, late last year, where spectrum are leased for use, to avoid the previous practice of people hoarding spectrum.
According to him work with his colleagues at the NCC has recorded so much success that the Commission has now been placed ahead of others in the region. Voice telephony has been deepened, he said, with its associated data use benefits and the cost of data had gone down within the period.
He noted that if government approved the needed subsidy the NCC wants to advance to Infracos to bring broadband capacity on Nigeria shore to the hinter land Nigerian digitalisation project would be achieved much faster.
