Federal Government has said the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the nation’s digital economy sector has created 2.2 million jobs for Nigerians in the last two years.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami disclosed this at the 19th edition of President Muhammadu Buhari Administration Scorecard series (2015-2023) in Abuja on Thursday.
Pantami said his ministry scored “A” in all the eight priority areas assigned to it by President Buhari.
According to him, the broadband penetration, as of last November, was at 46.2 per cent, while quarterly revenue generation from the ICT sector was N408 billion.
The Minister said the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) captured the National Identity Numbers (NIN) of over 95 million citizens on its database within two years, compared to the 39 million it captured earlier in 13 years.
He noted that through the implementation of the e-governance policy of the current administration, over N47 billion had been saved for the government.
In addition, the Federal Government said it has no plan to strip the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) of its powers.
Pantami said there was no iota of truth in the insinuation that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Bill currently before the National Assembly for review was designed to usurp the powers of the NCC.
The Minister explained that both the NCC Act 2003 and NITDA Act 2007 were obsolete and long overdue for review due to imperatives of new technologies, including the fact they did not address the fourth industrial revolution and emerging technologies.
Explaining the genesis of the Bills, Pantami said: “We are talking about Fourth Generation (4G) Technology and Fifth Generation (5G) Technology today as well as the digital economy. But the NITDA Act was specifically on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, while the NCC Act dwelt more on telecommunications.”
