Amechi Ogbonna
Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Office (EVC/CEO) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), is one public officer that believes in the rule of law. He has demonstrated this two years ago, when he put his feet down against all odds in defence of the NCC statute which he had sworn to uphold , in an effort to leave the nation’s communication space, better than he met it.
He obtained his BEng, MSc degrees from the Technical University of Wroclaw in Poland and his PhD from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) UK respectively.
Before moving over to steer the ship of the telecommunications industry regulator, Danbatta had served as a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Technology at Bayero University Kano for 28 years, where he taught courses in telecommunications engineering and electronics and held academic positions of Dean of the Faculty and Head of Department at different times.
He was the Vice President of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), International Centre for Advanced Communications Studies, which was established in the year 2004 by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to build capacity for the Nigerian/African telecom industry in the diverse areas of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). He recently spoke at a public event in Lagos.
Excerpts
Tale of two technologies
These two technologies were developing in parallel but there is convergence now. In your mobile phone, you have those two technologies in one. The smart-phone, social media and mobile applications are changing lifestyles, that is, they are changing the way we behave, bringing empowerment to large parts of the world including Nigerian students. The Nigerian Communication (NCC) Commission) has been mandated to drive the deployment of mobile technology and internet and our aim is to be able to generate that critical mass of ICT adoption and utilisation.
You can do this by literally putting in place digital literacy training that will sensitise Nigerians about the relevance, usefulness, importance of communication technology. Without literacy, there is no way Nigerians will be sensitised about information and communication technology to be able to do things more effectively and efficiently including doing those things that were hitherto not possible. We need to also ensure that we put in place regulations that will protect ICT usage; which is also very important.
As a matter of fact we need to ensure that Nigerians have access and connectivity to communication services, by ensuring that broadband is available and accessible at the same time and that accessibility should be at affordable rates.
Progress on our 8-point agenda
I must say we have not made much progress from when we hit 21 per cent because we were only at 22 per cent as at September 2017. Whenever we give our all, we normally record incredible success, some of which are international and the 22 per cent as at September 2017 was given by the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development.
However, going by the population of 198 million people in the country, when you compute 22 per cent of 198 million, you have around 45-50 million Nigerians having access to broadband services. But we need to define what broadband services are because Nigerians would like to know when we say there is accessibility to broadband services. This is because in term of access, the network is not a means of something you connect. It is rather the source for data-driven innovations. These innovations are supposed to be linked with local incentives and that is where broadband has the profound effect of social and economically transforming societies and Nigeria is no exception.
Why broadband is critical
Broadband remains pertinent to social and economic transformation because the accessibility must be at the right and fast speed of 1.5 megabits per second not megabytes. That is why we say there is clearly a digital divide in the country because bits of 5-10 megabits per second is attainable in Lagos. In the northern part of the country, we hardly have 5 kilobits per second. Therein lies the danger we are talking about the digital divide which goes against the International Communications Union (ICU) rule and its global plan for students of the country which says this service should be inclusive and inclusivity is one of the three cardinal items of the ICU in the current plan being implemented globally. When we say inclusive, it means students of the world, including Nigerians, will attest to the fact that the concept of citizenship is more acceptable in any part of the country as citizens of the world in a country take care of all the differences that have been dividing us before now. So citizens are supposed to have access to broadband services wherever they are or whatever their circumstances might be and this is a challenge to many parts of the world because the digital divide is there always. This is one area where the ICU said there should be no divide; all of us are therefore supposed to have access to services not the other way round.
Agenda on optimising use and benefits of spectrum
Without spectrum, there is no way telecommunication services will be available to the citizens. Spectrum facilitates the roll-out of services and the more the spectrum, the better the services and the more the level of utilisation of services, the better the quality of services. This is why NCC has made sure spectrum is available and for this to be given to operators either through administrative assignments and other means which is acceptable to the laws of this land. We recently received approval from the board of NCC to commence spectrum trading in the industry. Spectrum trading consists of spectrum liaison, transfer and spectrum sharing. The board met and granted approval for it to commence because of the realisation that we don’t have spectrum with some of our licenses. The spectrum we have is not being used to provide services and therefore unconsciously it is being speculated. You pay for a license to acquire spectrum, resources accruing from the sale of spectrum goes to the Federal Government, so we would like to ensure that the spectrum given the licensees by NCC is being put to productive use. We get worried if spectrum is assigned either administratively or through auction and it is not being used to enhance communication services. So we really have to look at the best way to solve this problem so that licensees will come out to share their spectrum to either lease or transfer it. This was what was approved by the board to facilitate spectrum trading in the telecommunication sector in Nigeria. We are therefore looking at the spectrum map and the whole idea of looking at this map is to identify areas where we can bring up more spectrum that will be released to this industry for use.
ICT innovations and investment opportunities
Against challenges from US and Asia, including the emerging markets of Asia, Nigeria harvested awards in all of our six innovators. This is a challenge in the area of ICT innovation and we are not resting on our oars by telling ourselves that since we carted all the awards while our friends in Durban are of no consequence to us. We are getting ready again to ensure that we maintain this enviable position attained through dint of hard work through our innovative youths. I am sure the process must have commenced to unearth more of such great ideas, which attracted attention in Bisan, which culminated in our youths doing us proud in multiple ways. By way of investment opportunities, we said at Bisan that there is no better time to invest in the Nigerian telecommunication space than now and we went with assurances with the ERGP (Economic Recovery and Growth Plan) of the government, a plan that is providing incentives, waivers to investors who would want to come into this country to invest their resources not only in the telecommunication sector but in other sectors of the Nigerian economy, and I think by the response of those who graced the different events we conducted in Bisan, we were encouraged that there is a positive response to the way and manner we marketed the investment opportunities in this country. We have received visitors in NCC, and questions were asked about what NCC can do to facilitate more investment in the market, especially in the downstream and upstream segments of the telecommunications market. So we are waiting for more investors to come and the information is available to investors about how quickly they can get approvals through the Executive Order 001 on Transparency and Fairness in Service Delivery for which NCC is fully compliant.
Competition and inclusive growth
In January, NCC came out in full blast to introduce to the industry the work that was being done by two consultants, namely, PricewaterhouseCoopers for interconnect rate in the industry and KPMG which was assigned to look at the data price flow.
Facilitating strategic collaborations and partnerships
There is no way NCC would be able to discharge this important mandate assigned by the Federal Government through the Act establishing the Commission without establishing collaborations and partnerships with the agencies of government and individuals who might add value to our work. We have succeeded in putting together an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Nigeria Civil Defence Corps (NCDC) that we will ensure the protection of critical infrastructure in the telcom space in this country. We also signed an MoU with CBN on how we can be able to drive mobile money service penetration and ensure financial inclusion for all our citizens. Therefore, the commission would take a hard look at the work we are doing and decide on where partnership is needed to ensure we drive the various mandate given to us by the government.