Abuja, Oct. 19, 2023 – Dr. Aminu Maida, the new Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has promised to align the Commission’s focus to advance the nation’s digital transformation agenda.
He said this would be in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Tinubu.
Maida made the promise during his maiden meeting with the senior management staff of the Commission in Abuja.
He said there was the need for the NCC to ensure that all Nigerians had access to affordable and reliable broadband services.
Maida said this would ensure “effective broadband infrastructure diffusion across the length and breadth of Nigeria.
He paid tributes to former chief executives of the Commission for their roles in building a resilient telecommunication industry.
Maida said the pursuit of improved quality service delivery on all the networks would be one of his priorities as well as supporting the visions of the Federal Government and the Ministry of Communications, Innovations and Digital Economy.
“Considering the fact that many people are going more digital and virtual in everything they do, the telecom infrastructure is now under much stress.
“President Tinubu’s vision emphasises the need to build more robust broadband connectivity that will not only facilitate seamless digital transactions, but also serve as the bedrock for e-governance and other socio-economic initiatives.
“As such, we would align with this aspiration to increase broadband penetration to 70 per cent and to cover 90 per cent of the population by 2025.
“Therefore, we need to build a reliable telecom industry with impressive Quality of Service (QoS) indicators with Quality of Experience (QoE) as our watchword and ultimate goal.
“This also requires us to address a number of issues such as the Right of Way (RoW) challenge, ensuring security of our telecom infrastructure, among others.
“Efforts must be made to significantly improve service delivery by ensuring the NCC is performance-driven.
“Mr President has a very clear agenda from which all of us are going to take our direction. The two major areas are job creation and enabling the digital economy.
“Where we are going in a nutshell is; everything that we do in this Commission has to align directly with the Strategic Plan of the Hon. Minister of Communications, Innovations and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani and ultimately to the Renewed Hope agenda of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We would not deviate from that.
“We would not entertain anything that deviates from this direction because my Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are fed into the Minister’s KPIs and the President KPIs come from the electorate that put him into power.
“The Hon. Minister has said clearly that he is ready to build a robust digital infrastructure and empower three million Nigerians digitally and we have to do our best to support him in this regard,” he said.
Maida said that there was a plan to empower three million Nigerians in digital skills and entrepreneurship in the Strategic Plan of the Minister, adding that this will require the Commission to support Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) as a digital training institution to be well positioned in driving the government’s agenda on youth empowerment.
The EVC also stressed the importance of effective spectrum management and utilisation in supporting the envisioned digital connectivity agenda, which is critical to service deployment to the generality of Nigerians and businesses in the country.
Maida commended his predecessors and the entire staff of the Commission for the laudable roles they played in digital transformation of all sectors by stimulating the deployment of baseline telecom infrastructure.
He called on the staff of the Commission to join his leadership with a sense of purpose to actualise the president’s Renewed Hope agenda, which he said, recognised a thriving digital economy in achieving sustainable development and quality of life for all citizens. (GBN)
