The Nigerian Communications Commission is doing everything possible to collaborate with partners to achieve tremendous progress on National Policy for Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Nigerian Telecommunications Sector.
Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta made this remark at a maiden virtual Policy Implementation Assisted Forum on the promotion of indigenous content in the Telecommunications Sector.
The Commission, he said considers stakeholder engagement and consultation as a key strategic regulatory approach hence the success story of the sector is largely attributable to the wide consultations and engagements employed at every step of the sectors journey.
Prof. Danbatta reminded participants of the established policy direction of the Federal Government on local content within the oil and gas sector. Thus, the National Telecommunications Policy posited that the domestic production of telecommunications hardware and software is desirable for national development. He emphasised that the policy further states that, Government shall encourage domestic production of telecommunications equipment, components and software to meet local and export demands.
Danbatta said “in giving legal backing to the above policy direction, the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003 identifies, as one of its primary objects the encouragement of local and foreign investments in the Nigerian communications industry”.
Accordingly, the EVC observed at the virtual engagement that the development of effective local participation at all levels of the value chain becomes a sine-qua-non to the overarching national economic development and market success.
He said “NCC is vigorously promoting local investment in digital infrastructure and competition in the provision of accessible high speed broadband infrastructure”.
This he observed will in turn enable the Commission to deliver on the stipulated targets in the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NNBP) 2020-2025″.
Giving more insights into the Commission’s roadmap for implementation of the Policy for the Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Nigerian Telecom Sector.
Prof. Danbatta said the Commission has established the Nigeria Office for Developing the Indigenous Telecoms Sector (NODITS), that is saddled with the responsibility of implementation of the NPPIC as well as the Executive Orders 003 and 005.
Other initiative, as explained by the EVC is Collaboration with National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
He therefore gave assurances that his Commission is developing a robust compliance monitoring and enforcement framework leveraging on existing mechanisms.
Earlier, Mr. Omobayo Azeez, who is the Chairman, Organising Committee of policy implementation assisted forum organised by the Business Metrics Nigeria Team said the import of the event is to take the indigenous content policy in the telecoms sector beyond verbal commitment.
He said implementation has remained the major problem facing policy direction in Nigeria, believing that the objective of the a robust policy initiative can only be acheived by creating active dialogue around it to ensure that individual stakeholders understand how they fit into the bigger picture and what role is expected of them to attain the greater good of our economy.
“Our desire is to change this order of poetic policy pronouncement and prosaic execution by creating a midpoint interface between the government and private sector players, where policies can be dissected, digested and driven to effective implementation” he said.