The House of Representatives at its plenary session on Tuesday 6th February 2018 urged the Federal Government to timeously implement the National Broadband Plan (2013-2018) to drive development.
Presenting the motion on the floor of the House, Hon Sergius Ose Ogun (PDP: Edo) stated that in 2012, the Federal Ministry of Communications and Technology set up a Presidential Committee on National Broadband Plan who produced a report on how broadband could be made available to all Nigerians within a five year period (2013-2018). He noted that despite the Presidential Committee’s report, submitted six years ago, the nation’s Submarine Cable System remained hampered by gross under-utilization due to the poor implementation of the National Broadband Plan even after a $1 billion investment.
Speaking further, the lawmaker informed the House that there were investments running into billions of dollars by government and private operators in the telecommunications sector such as the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (now NTEL), South Atlantic 3(SAT3), Fibre optic cable (who have invested over $600 million), MTN’s West African Cable System’s (worth $ 650 million), ACE Cable by Dolphin Telecoms (worth $ 700 million), Main One (worth $300m) and Globacom’s Glo cable, (worth $ 800 million). He stated that the capacity of these investments could trigger the revolution witnessed in the mobile phone segment if properly channeled and could be streamlined into other areas such as e-governance, e-health, e- education, e-security etc if aided by a National Broadband plan.
Lastly, Hon Ogun said that if the target of a five-fold increase in broadband penetration by 2018 is achieved as proposed by the National Broadband Plan, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector could contribute over 30% to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) within four years. He also added that broadband penetration was an essential driver of economic growth and quoted the World Bank stating that a 10 per cent surge in broadband penetration in developing countries will result in a corresponding increase of 1.4 per cent in GDP. He also emphasized the importance of the sector in view of the present administration’s objective to diversify the economy from an oil based one to a knowledge and ICT driven one to boost development.
The House mandated its Committee on Telecommunications and ICT to ensure implementation and report back within 8 weeks for further legislative action.
