LONG ROAD TO DIGITAL ECONOMY

Towards the last days of the previous regime, sometime in 2023, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the immediate past Communication & Digital Economy Minister, wrote off N70billion debt owed for Spectrum fees (debt forgiveness) by a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) believed to be terminally ill.

While industry stakeholders frowned at this, describing it as nepotism taken too far, the Minister and the NCC looked the other way.

And this set dangerous trend in the sector especially when many operators and players are struggling with one challenge or the other to provide services to subscribers. Digital Economy is possible only if all players live up to their billings, the operators insist.

The country does not have a national carrier that was supposed to stand the gap of taking services to the rural areas seamlessly. NITEL suffered a fatal fate after many failed attempts to sell it and repositioned for optimum performance and the company named 21 years ago as a Second National Operator (SNO) by the NCC is yet to actualise that component of its license and the NCC has pretended as if nothing is wrong. In other climes, the regulator will rise up to its responsibilities by calling operators to order.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), Britain’s Office of Telecommunications (oftel), America’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) are truly independent and no respecters of persons, but in Nigeria, it’s the other way round. Personalities first.

Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world where everyone hooks on to mobile telephony services in homes, offices and on the road if they must communicate. Fax machine services that were powered by fixed lines are not readily available. Only a few service providers like IPNX, 21st Century Technology, VGC Communications among others provide pockets of services with very limited spread.

And we want to create a Digital Economy. How especially when underserved and unserved areas of the country are increasing by the day and even where services exist, the quality is nothing to write home about.

The NCC has been unusually quiet and seemingly inactive and it is not clear how government intends to actualise the Digital Economy Agenda that was heavily hyped by the immediate past Communications & Digital Economy Minister.

Although, the Current Minister, Bosun Tijani has tacitly inherited the agenda and planning to run with it, what is clear despite his good intentions, is that the race will be very long and may take a lifetime to end.

For one thing, technology is not native to Africa let alone Nigeria despite the manifest growth recorded so far in terms of connectivity in telecommunications.

In reality, it is not going to be a tea party especially since it is out of place to legislate on technology like a policy document. Nigeria has recorded growth in telecommunications not technology.

On the eve of the Digital Mobile License (DML),auction in 2001,the NCC management then led by Engineer Ernest Ndukwe avoided a needless controversy spewed by a particular influentia Nigerian who was the country representative for Motorola Inc .This Nigerian who was also a major shareholder in a Private Telephone Operator (PTO) that was deploying its telephone services with the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology made frantic efforts to impose that technology on Nigeria and campaigned spiritedly for its acceptance not only by the NCC but also by the government.

But Ndukwe and his team were very smart, they suggested to government technology neutrality saying the auction was not going to be based on Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) but that whoever won a slot was at liberty to deploy any technology of their choice.

And the bidders went into the auction with this in mind.

Today, we all know which technology is thriving and what fate befell CDMA.

So in building a digital economy, we suggest to Minister Tijani to have an open mind in its pursuit and avoid the hype associated with those whose stock- in- trade is grandstanding, and sometimes with tongue in cheek attitude to government and governance.

How are we going to actualise the Digital Economy agenda when for instance, there are grave access gaps in terms of those areas that are without telecommunications services? Internet connectivity is still very poor especially in semi urban and rural Nigeria.

There are bottlenecks all over the country where there are clear multiple regulations across the land.

There are issues of Right of Way where state governments have seen it as their oil wells and opportunity to milk Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to pay heavily for every linear of space they excavate in the process of providing quality services to subscribers thereby making consumers suffer like the proverbial grass that suffers when two elephants are involved in a brawl.

And so quality of services nosedives especially in areas that the MNOs are unable to pay the prohibitive fees imposed by state governments.

Strangely, the Right of Way issue was resolved by the National Economic Council in 2013 where it prescribed workable solutions that were supposed to guide everyone including the NCC but today, the regulator is incapacitated and unable to provide a direction in this regard.

So how do we grow a Digital Economy in the face of these challenges? On the contentious fifth generation (5G) technology which is now a global race, immediate past Minister, Isa Pantami and the immediate past Executive Vice Chairman (EVC),Umar Danbatta were excited to introduce it to Nigeria. There was no problem with that except that both men sold a dummy to the government more so using it as a political weapon to increase government income and pay a percentage as a fee to some phoney consultants.