The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, has urged the new leadership of the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) to ensure diligent implementation of the new Strategic Management Plan (SMP) 2022-2024 developed for WATRA.
Danbatta gave the advice 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.
While pledging the unflinching support of the Commission towards advancing the socio-economic agenda of the Assembly for the sub-region, Danbatta emphasized that the strategic vision plan is expected to guide the activities of the Assembly over the next years.
He said 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.
“In my capacity as the immediate past Chairman of WATRA, I promise my commitment to always share ideas with the new leadership of WATRA towards consolidating the successes so far recorded by WATRA under my leadership. I will give advice that will make you succeed as a friend and not the one that will undermine your authority,” Danbatta said, while welcoming the WATRA team in his office.
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Danbatta acknowledged the important role 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.
He further tasked the new WATRA executives to roll their sleeves and deepen the work they had started towards achieving the mandate, vision and mission of the Assembly.
“If we work together as a team, I believe we would make a lot of difference in a manner that will result in the socio-economic transformation of our sub-region in order to improve the standard of living of our people as we have seen this done successfully in many countries. So, we can repeat the same feat here in Africa,” he said.
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.
“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.