Nigeria must fight insurgency with ICT– NCC

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, says Nigeria must leverage on and appropriately deploy telecoms and ICT resources to fight insurgency and contain other emergencies.

He stated this at the Conference Room of the NCC Head Office during the induction of the commission to the membership of the Forum of Spokespersons of Security and Response Agencies. Bassey Uket, a principal manager at the commission’s Special

Duties Department is the NCC’s representative at the Forum.

Danbatta said the collaboration between NCC and the security and other emergency response agencies, especially at the Emergency Communication Centres (ECC), suggested that many of the multi-faceted challenges could be addressed with scaling up the degree of deployment of electronic strategies.

To underscore the imperative of electronic and digital communication systems in managing the nation’s security challenges, said: “As we are addressing the situation in one part of the country, you find escalation in another part of the country”.

Danbatta gave an example of the 112 Emergency Communication Numbers, which are routed to the ECCs, as “a practical implementation of a security system that is bringing succour to citizens in distress”.

He described the ECCs as a well-conceived project, saying it was a project that had enhanced the capacity of agencies in the security governance sector to manage crises.