The exponential growth in the Nigerian
Information Technology and telecommunication requires a university to
support the human capacity requirement, the Minister of Communications,
Mr. Adebayo Shittu, has said.
Shittu said it was for this reason that
the Ministry of Communications wanted to transform the Digital Bridge
Institute, established by the Nigerian Communications Commission, into a
fully fledged university.
He spoke when he visited Galaxy Backbone
Plc in Abuja on Friday. During the visit, the Managing Director of the
company, Mr. Yusuf Kazaure, said the ongoing devaluation of the naira
was impacting negatively on its operations.
The minister said, “The issue that is
very dear to my mind is the establishment of an Information and
Communications Technology university, which will be the first of its
kind in Africa. ICT is beyond classroom teaching of computers.
“The aim of this university is in view
of the exponential growth of ICT in Nigeria. There must be an
institution dedicated to the training of high-level manpower for the
industry.
“With the six campuses of Digital Bridge
Institute, currently being hosted by the NCC, we hope that we will take
ICT training and research to very high level.
“We know that in very many advanced countries, there are dedicated universities for the training of manpower for ICT.
“We want to replicate that in Nigeria.
Once we get the nod of the Federal Executive Council, we will commence
the establishment of an implementation committee to guide the process of
transforming DBI into West Africa ICT University.”
Shittu also said the ministry would
support the bid of the company to acquire a befitting headquarters for
its operations, noting that the property would pay for itself in the
end.
Making a presentation, Kazaure noted
that with devaluation of the naira, the cost of acquiring bandwidth,
space segment and support services had gone up because the services are
denominated in dollars.
He also lamented that despite the fact
that the demand for bandwidth service by Ministries, Departments and
Agencies serviced by Galaxy had gone up; the amount reserved for the
services by government had not seen a corresponding increase.
He said, “The MDAs have consequently
experienced service dissatisfaction resulting from insufficient
bandwidth and operational support capacity, inadequate coverage and
frequent service failures.
“The current stalemated situation has
also negatively impacted the perception of Galaxy Backbone and the
concept of sharing of common services.
“This has not helped the much-needed
adoption of ICTs by MDAs and the Federal Ministry of Communications-led
effort to ‘Get Government Online” through automation of work processes
and deployment of public services online.”
The Galaxy Backbone boss said there was
also a lack of proper policy framework for e-Government and the concept
of sharing common services.
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