Nigeria’s federal minister in charge of the communication sector, Adebayo Shittu, has inaugurated the country’s National Broadband Council.
Speaking at the ceremony, the minister said the council has been saddled with responsibility of providing periodic evaluation of progress and facilitate coordination in the delivery of the National Broadband Plan.
According to Shittu, the ministry and ICT stakeholders have identified some key challenges mitigating against infrastructure roll-out such as Right of Way (RoW) charges, Forex regime, inadequate power supply and security of installed equipment. He revealed that a number of steps have been taken to address the challenges including cooperation with relevant MDAs, States and corporate bodies to secure an improved operational environment, reduce cost of infrastructure roll-out, improve on the security of installed equipment and facilities, encourage innovation and entrepreneurship as well as improve on the ease of doing business regime.
Vanguard reported that the minister charged members of the committee to review the status of the National Broadband Plan as at 2017 and suggest ways of accelerating infrastructure deployment to achieve the target of 30 per cent broadband penetration by the year 2018. The Council is made of 19 members and is to be chaired by the minister.
The first council was inaugurated in 2013 by former minister of Communications, Omobola Johnson.
