The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, has highlighted the various
regulatory measures of the Commission toward deepening the adoption of
e-Government and other Internet-driven services in the country.
The EVC listed the measures in a presentation delivered during the
Nigeria e-Government Summit 2021 recently held in Lagos titled,
“e-Government: Opportunities and Challenges”, in which he focused on how
government agencies and parastatals can take advantage of advances in
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to improve service
delivery to Nigerians.
Represented by the Commission’s Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder
Management, Adeleke Adewolu, Danbatta stated that the NCC has been
working assiduously with all stakeholders to deepen penetration of
broadband infrastructure and services which support the growth of
e-Governance and other critical digital economy objectives throughout
Nigeria.
The EVC of NCC said the Commission recently unveiled its second
Strategic Vision Plan (SVP)- 2021-2025, which enables it to effectively
align with efforts of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy
(NDEPS) 2020-2030; the Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020-2025, and
other digital economy polices and global best practices.
“Leveraging on the successes we achieved under our previous SVP, we are
repositioning both the Commission and the entire industry to facilitate
the availability of solid infrastructure and to proliferate digital
platforms that effectively and efficiently enable digital inclusion
throughout Nigeria,” he said.
Highlighting some of the activities of the Commission geared towards
ensuring accessibility to efficient and affordable network
infrastructure to power e-Government and other digital economy
initiatives in the country, Danbatta, pointed out that, following the
presidential approval of the Fifth Generation (5G) Policy, the NCC has
developed a 5G Deployment Plan for Nigeria’s digital economy.
Danbatta said the Commission has set up a committee to auction the 3.5
gigahertz (GHz) band for 5G deployment in Nigeria, and the details will
be announced in due course. Prof. Danbatta also disclosed that the
regulator is currently updating the National Frequency Allocation Table
(NFAT) to achieve more efficient spectrum allocation and usage to
reflect World radio communications Conference (WRC)-19 recommendations.
He declared that the update of the spectrum allocation table is among
several other initiatives being implemented by NCC to ensure efficient
use of spectrum resource in the country.
Meanwhile, the EVC has said the task of attracting investments into the
broadband infrastructure space is a collective responsibility. Thus, he
called for increased collaboration of all stakeholders in other to
remove barriers to investment which include multiple taxation and
regulation, arbitrary pricing of bottleneck resources such as
Right-of-Way (RoW), time-consuming and unfriendly approval processes.
“These factors discourage investments in digital infrastructure and
reduce the speed at which we provide our people with access to seamless
digital service infrastructure for e-Governance and other services,”
Danbatta emphasised.
The summit was organised by DigiServe Network Services Limited, in
partnership with NCC, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the
Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and the
Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON).
Earlier, Executive Chairman, DigiServe Network Services, Lanre Ajayi, in
his opening address, said with the advent of democracy, expectations of
citizens from governments are higher because citizens rate their
governments largely on how efficient and effective government services
are delivered to them.
“Hence, e-Government, which is essentially about the deployment of
technologies in government processes and service delivery to citizens,
provides immense opportunities for governments to deliver services to
citizens most effectively and efficiently,” he said.
