President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Dr Bashir Gwandu as vice chairman of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).
According to sources in the Presidency, Gwandu’s appointment came on the heels of the recent controversial re-appointment and withdrawal of the two-year further extension of the current vice chairman, Prof Mohammed Sani Haruna, who has been in the position for over 10 years now.
Haruna was first appointed to the substantive position of vice chairman of NASENI in April 2013 by President Goodluck Jonathan and in April 2017 his tenure was renewed for another five years by Buhari, bringing a two-term tenure of ten years to an end on April 2, 2023.
A further two-year extension had been granted for Haruna, but the government reversed it after it came to light that he had already spent ten years.
Gwandu, one of the early supporters of Buhari since 2002, is an accomplished technocrat. He has remained a strategic force in the think tank of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and a surprise exclusion from the president’s cabinet in the last eight years.
He was the executive commissioner technical services and also acting executive vice chairman of the National Communications Commission (NCC).
Gwandu has chaired a number of UN bodies such as International Telecommunications Union (ITU); the Radiocommunications Advisory Group of the ITU (the RAG); and the vice chairman of ITU-R Joint Task Group 4567 (JTG-4567).
He served as the vice chairman of Committee 4 of the ITU Radiocommunications Assembly 2012 (RA-12) and became the chairman of the CIG in March 2012.
He has designed many devices used in the telecoms, oil/gas, power, defence, and aviation industries, some of which have been patented in Europe and the United States.
He is a chartered electrical engineer, and one of the few African Fellows of the prestigious Institution of Engineering Technology (IET) UK since 2010.
He has published over 40 Electronic and Electrical Engineering Research papers in world-class Electrical Engineering journals and conference proceedings. His publications are very highly cited internationally. He has been on the Board of a number of technology companies locally and internationally.
Gwandu holds a number of Masters degrees and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from very prestigious universities in the UK. He was part of a number of Nigerian Presidential/Ministerial think-tank committees including: Vision-20-2020; Nigerian ICT RoadMap; 1st Panel of Technology experts that approves University Research funding under TETFund; and the Launch Committee of the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComsat-1, the Nigeria’s national Broadband Plan 2020-2025 etc).
He has been the lead speaker for Nigeria, The Commonwealth, and Africa from the African Telecoms Union (ATU) standpoint, at UN World Conferences.
Gwandu provided leadership and spoke for the African team on Agenda Item 1.4 of ITU WRC-2007, which was the turning point for Africa on Spectrum and ITU WRC matters (i.e through the effort of which 450-470MHz, 790–862MHz, 2300–2400MHz and 3.4-3.6GHz bands were allocated and identified for IMT for the region).
He gave pivotal leadership to ATU in 2006/2007 which led to the turn-around of ATU activities from then onwards. In particular, he is known to have led the successful technical arguments, planning, and pursuit of the Allocation of 800MHz in 2007, and the 700MHz in 2012 i.e. first and second digital dividend bands to the whole of ITU Region 1 (EMEA) during WRC 2007 and 2012 respectively.
At the WRC-2019, he led the African team charged with the pursuit of the identification of frequency bands 24.25– 27.5 GHz, 37–43.5 GHz, 45.5–47 GHz, 47.2–48.2 and 66–71 GHz bands for the deployment of 5G, a task that was successfully delivered.
He also ensured that other bands such as the 3.6-3.8GHz, 600MHz, and upper 6GHz bands are on the Agenda for IMT identification at the upcoming WRC-23. In the area of standardization, he played a major leadership role in delivering the African goals during the Johannesburg WTSA-08 and Dubai 2012 amongst many other achievements.
Gwandu proposed the Africa-wide preplanning of Digital TV stations through the ITU, and has participated actively in the DSO preplanning work for African countries.
He is an acknowledged expert and consultant in setting standards for various generations of the technologies including 4G and 5G.
