The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has acknowledged the important role West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) has been playing in creating policy, legal and regulatory frameworks in the sub-region since the mid-1990s and commended the synergy among member states that has resulted in significant growth to the ICT ecosystem.
Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta stated this during a recent courtesy visit of the new executives of WATRA, led by its new Chairman, Sekou Oumar Barry of the Republic of Guinea. Barry came to visit Danbatta in company of the first and second Vice Chairmen of the Assembly, representing Mali and Sierra Leone respectively; as well as the Executive Secretary of WATRA, Aliyu Aboki, among others.
Danbatta promised the new leadership of the unflinching support of the Commission towards advancing the socio-economic agenda of the Assembly for the sub-region.
Speaking further, the EVC urged the new WATRA chairman to ensure diligent implementation of the new Strategic Management Plan (SMP) 2022-2024 developed for WATRA. The EVC also emphasized that the strategic vision plan is expected to guide the activities of the Assembly over the next few years.
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According to Danbatta, the past one year of his tenure as former chair of WATRA has been eventful with a lot of measures put in place towards deploying the power of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for advancing socio-economic development of the sub-region.
“I would like to congratulate my dear brother, Sekou Oumar Barry, on your emergence as the new WATRA chairman and to express, in very clear terms, our commitment as NCC and in my capacity as immediate past Chairman of WATRA to support your leadership to succeed in consolidating on existing achievements of the Assembly towards taking WATRA to a greater height,” he said.
Reinforcing his delight, Danbatta said, “This is an action in the right direction because we cannot deny the fact that successes are needed and financial and human resources are crucial to achieving success in any organization and WATRA with 16 member countries is not different. The expectation of our citizens is very high, especially in the area of ICT and we must strive to meet and surpass their yearnings.”
In his response, Barry, who thanked Danbatta for making giant strides during his one-year tenure as Chairman of WATRA, assured of his readiness to work closely with member states and the EVC for valuable advice and guidance to collectively take WATRA to the next level over the next one year.
He pointed out that his leadership will focus on four key areas of priorities. These, according to him, include ensuring that the SMP is finalized and fully becomes operational, ensuring that member fees contribution is revised upward so that WATRA will have adequate resources to run its operation, build its permanent structure, and ensuring that the regional roaming policy for the sub-region becomes a reality.
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“We want to ensure that the plan you started is not going to stop. We understand that the time left for us is short. We know we cannot do everything and that is why we are going to be focusing on the four key priorities areas as itemized above so that at the end of the tenure we can say we have succeeded on those priorities,” Barry said.
Danbatta handed over to Barry as the new WATRA Chairman during the 19th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Assembly which took place from March 29-31, 2022, in Conakry, Republic of Guinea. The Assembly currently has 16 members states including Togo, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Niger Republic, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea Bissau, Republic of Guinea, The Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Benin Republic, Ghana and Liberia.