Nigerian Communications Commission inaugurates Inter-agency Committee

The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has inaugurated an Inter-agency Committee to evaluate the 2018 research proposals submitted by Universities across the country.

Inaugurating the Committee in Abuja, the Chief Executive Officer of the NCC, Professor Umar Danbatta said it has the mandate to deliberate, evaluate and select researches that meet the criteria of sponsorship by the commission.

“The Commission is leveraging the research experience domicile in the Nigerian University system to improve the telecommunication sector for the economic development of the country and to add value as well as quality to the people,’’Professor Danbatta explained.

“Our objective has been to deliberately utilise the capacity of residents in the academia and to redirect it to research activities that can impact on business and society leading to the development of new products and services for the entire industry. We are also of the strong opinion that for an industry that has recorded globally appreciable growth over the years and a major contributor to the country’s GDP, the sector has the capacity to contribute to the expansion of knowledge in the academia and consequently benefit from such contributions,” he stated.

Solution to problems
He noted that the researches would provide solutions to some of the challenges in the telecommunications industry.

“As we know, telecommunications has become a major catalyst and facilitator of growth of other industries. Our goal is to be able to use this intervention to address industry problems as well as some other societal issues that need urgent attention. To achieve this objective, the committee members are challenged to go through every document in order to achieve a very fair assessment of every submission,’’ Professor Danbatta stressed.

He added that; “I want to state categorically that our budget is not elastic due to the prevailing economy which is slowly rising out of recession, I will want to quickly add that the involvement in implementing proposals and being given the opportunity to contribute to develop new solutions for the telecommunications sector is an important objective. For this reason we are irrevocably committed to the implementation of the selected proposals and can vouch for their sustainability in to the foreseeable future. Let me personally canvass that we pick proposals with definite timelines of implementation.”

The Chairman of the Inter-agency Committee for 2018 Research Proposals from the Academia, Professor Bashir Idris explained that the committee is a product of the two out of the  NCC’ s 8-point.

The relevant agenda include; to promote ICT Innovation and investment opportunities; and to facilitate strategic partnerships with relevant ICT stakeholders.

Highlighting the mandate of the committee, Professor Idris said that the preliminary assess of the proposal is to see how to meet the basic requirements.

He said;“those cleared will be deliberated for about four to five months when we resume and it will be taken into consideration when we resume with our reports in December, we will then harmonise and make our proposals for consideration and final approval.”

On the criteria to be followed by the committee in selecting the research proposal, Professor Idris stated that “the proposals will focus on things that are suppose to either improve what is already in existences in the telecom sector or to leverage on the industry to address our local issues and also consider proposal that are centred on local content.”

The committee is expected to compete its assignment with five months and summit the selected research proposals to the NCC.