The former director of public affairs, at the Nigerian Communications Commission ( NCC), and current President of African ICT Foundation, Mr. Tony Ojobo, has called for the equal and equitable provision and access to digital networks, services, and platforms for the urban, rural, the poor and the rich, male and female across the world, especially Nigeria.
Ojobo made the call while speaking to Embracing Change and Digital Transformation in The New Normal, the theme of a conference organized by TechEconomy, an online news platform. The event took place in Lagos, yesterday.
According to him, network operators, and industry regulators should, as a matter of urgency close the digital gap between the urban and rural population and schools, provide low-cost devices in schools for digital learning, through the Incentivising of operators to provide services in underserved and unserved areas, while the appropriate agencies provide adequate budget for the deployment of pervasive broadband infrastructure.
Ojobo was of the opinion that the cost of digital inequity and inequality was too high, as lack of access in rural communities is fuelling the divide between the urban and the rural population and causing unaffordability.
He noted that Covid-19 put 826 Million children out of school in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020, 1.5 Billion students globally unable to have access to online education during the pandemic in 2020, and 63 Million primary and secondary school teachers were unable to teach during the same period, according to a UNESCO Report of April 2020.
He said the world is embracing more of “Man-to-Machine” and “machine–to–machine” Communications and this has implications for the human resources professionals, jobs, mental health, and interpersonal relations.
According to him, since COVID 19 Caught the World unprepared, things will never be the same again. The world as we knew it has changed, bringing about the new normal behaviours, social distancing, vaccination, use of face masks, booster Shots, hand-washing, and hand sanitization amongst others.
