The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria ( ATCON), Association of Licenced Telecom Operators of Nigeria 9alton) and other stakeholders have called on the federal government, its agencies, and other relevant stakeholders, such as the Nigerian Communication Commission ( NCC), Central Bank of Nigeria ( CBN) and the National Information Technology Development Agency ( NITDA) to take steps to move the country away from a mono-economy by leveraging on the possibilities and benefits offered by the Internet and other ICT applications to grow the Nigerian economy.
The step would free the country from a reliance on oil revenue that keeps dwindling and the value of the naira tat keeps on down. The stakeholders also urged relevant agencies to put up policies that would stem the growing tide of skilled young Nigerians who have continued to run away from the country because of inclement social-economic and security environments.
The ATCON president, Teniola Olusola, who spoke at the first Nigerian Information Technology Reporters Association ( NITRA) webinar Innovation Tech Forum today said if Nigeria does not diversify it would take the country a long time to recover from the impact of COVID 19 on the economy.
He also said Nigeria needs to take steps to tap into the new money-spinner, which is the use of video platforms to run businesses and conduct interactions.
Teniola argued that oil remittances can no longer sustain the Nigerian population, and government resorting to taxation to improve revenue base would not add much, except stakeholders work together to create a digital economy, shifting from the consumer market to production to achieve a balance of trade, instead of the current negative trade balance.
He further said there was a need to create appropriate skill sets and stem the increase in the brain drain of Nigerians youths, provide infrastructure to meet penetration gaps, and provide incentives for investment into the critical ICT industry. According to him, Nigerian needs to tweak the education system to encourage Science, Technology, Engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects.
ALTON Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo agrees with Teniola, saying a lot needs to be done to sustain the industry, the most critical factor in moving Nigeria forward in the post Covid19 era.
He observed that the current attitude of the section of the police force, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad ( SARs) which harasses Nigerian youths who own laptops was inimical to development in the ICT era. The SARs action, he argued was contributing to the brain drain of Nigerian youths who are the ones to drive the digital economy.
“There should be a deliberate effort to keep our talents, our young ones who are being harassed by SARS for owning laptops, who now leave for other countries where there is social security for their survival”, he said.
He said there was a need for the telecom operators who are involved in developing the Nigerian ICT infrastructure to receive speedy approvals from government agencies so as to quicken the effort to bridge the penetration gap.
Adebayo also said that though some states have given very low right-of-way fees, in some case zero fees, they nevertheless are taking steps to derive maximum revenue from other areas, such as town planning fees, an act that is eroding the gains of the right of way fee reductions.
