By ADEDEJI ADEYEMI FAKOREDE
THE Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, has said that Africa is no more a continent in need of handouts from the international community, but should be seen as an equal partner with boundless investment opportunities in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.
Speaking when the Secretary-General of African Telecommunications Union (ATU), Adduoulkarim Soumaila, when latter visited him in Abuja, Danbatta noted that Africa has come of age within the global ICT theatre, hence the need to ensure that the continent’s interests are always protected at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) thereby ensuring that the region’s position in the development of resolutions are included in final outcomes.
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Danbatta blamed the poor quality service in the country on what he called technical faults and promised to engage the ATU in order to explore their technical expertise finding a lasting solution to the menace.
”We know the factors that are responsible to the reduction of quality of service in Nigeria. Some of them are technical while others are non-technical sectors.
”We are going to engage African Union to explore their technical expertise in the management of quality of service in order to achieve the acceptable level of service in line with the standards provided by the ITU.
”There are a lot of expertises to be tapped from ATU. We do not accept the current poor quality of service we experience today and we will do everything possible to do that”, he stated.
He promised that NCC would collaborate more with ATU to build on existing relationship and capacity building for Nigerians.
”We have existing collaboration with Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU), where an important member is attested as Secretary-General.
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”We have indicated other areas of corporation ahead of the ITU conference that will soon be coming. We have pledged to work with ATU through the Secretary General in all our resolutions.
”We are going to continue with this level of corporation to higher level in order to achieve the objectives for which the ATU was established, taking telecom services to all parts of the country.”
In his remarks, the Secretary-General of ATU, Soumaila described Nigerian as one of the most dynamic market in the global telecom market.
He promised to partner with NCC to deepen the telecommunication market in Africa through knowledge sharing and capacity building.