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.