Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has said his ministry is in the process of raising a $2 billion fund to achieve interconnectivity of the entire country through fiber optic network.
Tijani disclosed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday after the federal executive council meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa.
According to him, achieving the project total connectivity of the entire length and breadth of the nation, the programme would be covering a stretch of 120,000 kilometres of fiber optic cables, revealing at least states will be part of the pilot stage of the programme.
He said the programme is staged to make use of existing facilities in the nation’s communications sector to address the various challenges facing the country, including security.
“So the first thing we’re doing, which is being pushed by Mr. President, is leveraging existing infrastructure that we have within NIGCOMSAT, which is the satellite company. Most of you know that Nigeria is the only country in West Africa with a satellite, but also leveraging the fiber network of Galaxy Backbone to deploy connectivity to all the 774 local government Secretariat. Those who are following that project, which was announced about two three weeks ago, would also see that we’ve actually started the connectivity.
“So a number of local government secretariats in Kogi State are now connected, a number in Zamfara are being connected this week, a number in Imo State are being connected this week. In the next six months, our goal is to reach at least eight of the states within the country to demonstrate the pilot and the goal is to then take it from there and cover the entire country.
“We believe that if these local government Secretariat are connected, because they’re the closest form of government to our people, that we can help them use technology to serve the people better, but also it can enhance security significantly as well.
“The second thing we’re doing, which the President has backed, is actually now an investment in extending our backbone for connectivity. Again, what drives connectivity in any country is the fiber optic network.
“This is the biggest foundation for connectivity. Nigeria is projected to invest in 120,000 kilometres of fiber optic cable to be able to cover the entire country. The minutes were at about 35,000 kilometres that the 5000 kilometres.
“We’ve done the numbers working with the best companies in this space. It will cost us less than a billion to complete the deployment of fiber optic cable. And the President is given the go ahead for us to source funds for that.
“So we are in the process of setting up a 2 billion $2 billion fund. I said it costs less than 1 billion. But the reason why we’re setting up a $2 billion fund is to use the balance to drive down the cost of connectivity in the country.
“We want to ensure that all schools are connected, all hospitals in the country, that country that they are connected, and also all government facilities as well. So we are in the process of setting up this fund.
“We’ve already received significant interest from the African Development Bank who are looking to put about $200 million into this. We’ve also had an extensive and deep conversation with the World Bank on this as well.
“The model we’re taking, which is we’re using the special purpose vehicle, is to actually also crowd in investment from the private sector to be able to deploy the fiber optic network that we want to deploy in the country.
“Lastly, is to actually also speak to the work that we’ve been doing with the Ministry of Defense. So we are in conversation with the Ministry of Defense to see how we can use enhanced satellite capabilities to help our security agencies to be able to do their work better.
“I can’t give much details on that until the advanced stage where we can begin to share what can be shared to the public. But this is something that the government is looking deeply into making significant progress on it as well”, he said.
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