Maida Unveils New Strategies To Drive ICT Sectoral Growth

The executive vice chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida, has unveiled his four-point agenda that will facilitate the growth of the industry within the five years of his administration, after he clocked 100 days in office.

Maida, while unveiling his strategy, at a meeting with Editors, on Thursday, in Lagos, averred that his administration will be focusing on collaboration, data, compliance and digitalization.

According to him, his administration will be working with critical stakeholders in the telecom industry, which include the consumers, the government, operators and stakeholders in other industries.

As a regulator of the telecoms industry, the NCC boss disclosed that everything the Commission will be doing will be data driven. “We will be driving the collection of a lot of data from our stakeholders to project the work that we are doing, so that we can have a high level of transparency. This is crucial because what you can’t measure and hold people accountable to, you cannot drive efficiency and performance,” he further explained.

On compliance, Maida averred that NCC is empowered by the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA 2003), to hold licensees to their obligations. “We have put in place obligations for our licensees to meet. We will help them meet those obligations, by deploying technology to make life easy for them. For instance, with technology, licensees can renew their licences,” he assured.

To achieve his targets, Maida said he will be working and focusing on three major stakeholders, which are telecom consumers, licensees/potential investors and the government.

Explaining further, he said, “We will be focusing on the needs of each of these stakeholders. For instance, we know consumers are looking for total Quality of Experience (QoE). We will be driving QoE, right from the point of how they find and select telecoms services. We will be leveraging data to be able to empower consumers to make the right choice, so that we can move away from the world where we have multiple sim devices. Rather than multiple devices and SIM Cards, we are looking at a situation, where consumers will only have one SIM card and one device.

“We are going to be working with our licensees on data tariff, speed and coverage.

We are going to be working with them see how tariff can be simpler and more transparent. We will continue to enlighten our consumers to understand the habits that drive greater data usage.

“We are also going to be focusing on issues that consumers have escalated. We are going to be stepping in, as a regulator, to see what the common issues that consumers are complaining about and what operators are doing about them, so that we can really hold everybody in the value chain accountable.”

On licensees, Maida, assured that the Commission plans to improve the resilience of the industry. “We are looking at reviewing the operating standards and introducing operating standards which are in line with international best practices. We are going to be leveraging technology to review our regulatory services and internal processes, so that our turnaround time for our regulatory services is greatly improved,” he added.

He reiterated his commitment to driving advocacy in the area of ensuring that telecoms infrastructure is seen as Critical National Infrastructure, that Right of Way (RoW) charges are either waived by the state government or they stick to the N145/linear charge and that the issue of multiple taxation is resolved.

In collaboration with the government, the NCC boss said he will be aligning his goals with that of the ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy’s blueprint. “All that we are doing in terms of policy direction, is being derived from that blueprint. Our policy is to grow the industry. We need to increase our contribution to the GDP in absolute terms. We are also focusing on job creation, especially for our youth and facilitates collaboration with other industries. The goal of the collaboration is to empower other industries to innovate and grow,” he added.