New NCC boss Maida commits to Tinubu’s vision on digital economy

The new Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida, has said he would align the Commission’s regulatory focus to achieve the promises of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda to advance the nation’s digital transformation agenda.

This was contained in a statement signed by Director, Public Affairs Reuben Muoka and made available to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday.

Maida, who spoke to the Senior Management team of the Commission at the Commission’s Head Office in Abuja Tuesday, said there is a need to ensure that the NCC strategically focuses on ensuring all Nigerians have access to affordable and reliable broadband services. Part of this is to ensure “effective broadband infrastructure diffusion across the length and breadth of Nigeria.

The new telecom regulator paid tributes to former chief executives of the Commission for their laudable role in building a resilient telecoms industry. Dr Maida said the pursuit of improved quality of service on the networks will be one of his priorities, as well as supporting the vision of the Federal Government and the Ministry of Communications, Innovations and Digital Economy.

“Considering the fact that many people are going more digital and virtual in everything they do, the telecom infrastructure is now under much stress. President Tinubu’s vision emphasises the need to build more robust broadband connectivity that will not only facilitate seamless digital transactions but also serve as the bedrock for e-governance and other socio-economic initiatives,” he said.

“As such, we would align with this aspiration to increase broadband penetration to 70 per cent and to cover 90 per cent of the population by 2025. Therefore, we need to build a reliable telecom industry with impressive quality of service (QoS) indicators with quality of experience (QoE) as our watchword and ultimate goal. This also requires us to address a number of issues such as the Right of Way (RoW) challenge, ensuring security of our telecom infrastructure, among others. Efforts must be made to significantly improve service delivery by ensuring the NCC is performance-driven,” he said.