Nigeria, UK partner to achieve 70% Broadband penetration in 5 years

Nigeria, UK partner to achieve 70% Broadband penetration
in 5 years

The Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy,
Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) FNCS, FBCS, FIIM on behalf of the
Federal Government inaugurated the Nigerian National Broadband Plan
Committee (2020-2025) Committee at the Transorp Hilton Hotel in
Abuja.

Inaugurating the Committee which comprises members from the
private and public sectors, the Minister stated that the work of
the committee will go a long way in supporting National Digital
Economy Policy and Strategy of Nigeria which include critical role
for Federal, States and Local government in the country.

He said digital economy is strategically dominating world
economy and Nigeria cannot promote and develop it without Broadband
in place and charged the committee to come up with strategy to
penetrate underserved and unserved areas in the country.

Pantami said that the Broadband plan 2013-2018 has expired and
urged the committee to look at the target that has not been
achieved and challenges that are affecting Broadband penetration.
He directed them to also look into many more challenges that have
not been stated previously and see how we can join hands and
resolved them collectively.

“It is because of this we come up with this that we have come up
with this very important strategic committee that would work on our
National Broadband Plan for 2020-2025”.

He urged the members of the committee to maintain objectivity in
their discussion/deliberation; to rightly identify our national
priority and preference because we cannot do everything at the same
time, He admonished that there is nothing personal in the
assignment but to honour the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.

The Minister advised the committee to look at the recently
released report and investigation by Huawei and Alliance 4
Affordable Internet (A4IA) 2013-2018 review report to extract
useful information that would help the committee.

In his remark, the representative of the British High
Commissioner- Head of Prosperity and Competition, Mr. Harrison Guy,
stated that Broadband penetration has huge potentials to transform
the way services are rendered in health and education and noted
that e-government delivers benefits across all sector of the
society.

He said the United Kingdom is an active partner of Nigeria, as
such is very more kin to support the country’s goals of increasing
the Broadband penetration rate between 65-66% within the next 5-6
years. Harrisonadded that UK government would provide technical
expertise to support the drafting of the new plan.

The Chairperson of the Nigerian National Broadband Plan
2020-2025, Chief Executive Officer, (MainOne), Ms. Funke Opeke in
her remarks, thanked President Muhammadu Buhari,
GCFR  for approving the setting up of the committee to
address the issue of |National Broadband Plan. She also noted that
the President recently participation in e-Nigeria and the launching
of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy clearly signal
his commitment to the digital economy.

According to her, “Broadband to the digital economy is like
electricity to the industrial world. We are foot soldiers to help
put together this new plan to ensure it happens. The stakeholder
here is not us but those young Nigerians who have future ahead of
them as they would be fully planted in the global digital economy”.
She therefore urged the committee members to put Nigeria’s interest
ahead

Phil Oshodin

Director (Press)