The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and other stakeholders have highlighted policies aimed at encouraging local content investment in the telecoms industry.
They listed the implementation plans of these policies while speaking at the maiden edition of the Policy Implementation Assisted Forum (PIAFo) hosted by Business Metrics on Thursday.
The Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Prof Umar Danbatta, said that the National Telecommunications Policy stated that the domestic production of telecommunications hardware and software is important for national development.
Danbatta, who was represented by a Deputy Director at NCC, Engineer Babagana Digima, added that the policy supports domestic production of telecommunications equipment, components and software to meet local and export demands.
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As such, he said strategies have been put in place to promote local investment in digital infrastructure and competition in the provision of accessible high speed broadband infrastructure.
He explained that the President Muhammadu Buhari recently presented “the National Policy for the Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Nigerian Telecom Sector (NPPIC), which seeks to accelerate the pace of indigenous digital capacity development and thereby enhance national competitiveness and prosperity for indigenous/local players in Nigeria.
“As required by the Policy, the Commission has established the Nigeria Office for Developing the Indigenous Telecoms Sector (NODITS). This Office is saddled with the responsibility of implementation of the NPPIC as well as the Executive Orders 003 and 005,” he added.
The virtual event which focused on the National Policy for the Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Nigerian Telecoms Sector.
Business Metrics Editor and Chairman, Organising Committee of the forum, Mr. Omobayo Azeez said in his opening remarks at the e-conference said that the forum was a brainchild of concerns arising from perceived poor implementation of policies in Nigeria.
He announced that the event marked the birth of a new initiative and an addition to the mechanism of policy implementation in Nigeria.
He said, “You will agree with me that Nigerian archive is replete with good policies across the various sectors of the economy. But poor implementation has always characterized the system.
“Our desire is to change this order of poetic policy pronouncement and prosaic execution by creating a midpoint interface between the government and private sector players, where policies can be dissected, digested and driven to effective implementation, and later appraised using measurable metrics to assess their success over time.”
