Barrister Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications, says that over 400 Federal Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs ) in Nigeria now have access to the Internet.
The Minister who gave this scorecard at a technology forum says the growth in Internet access in government underscores moves to improve the delivery of public sector services using technology.
Government has provided Internet access to about 400 MDAs, over 11,000 nodes of wireless Local Area Network (LAN) to all MDAs at the Federal Secretariat, over 40,000 email addresses for Government officials under the gov.ng & mil.ng domains, the Minister adds.
According to him, this has ensured that government data is hosted locally on a secured website with data back-up to MDAs and 200 servers hosting 94 MDAs.
Meanwhile, the Twitter handle of the National Information Development Agency has tweeted about the Minister (seen below wearing a VR gear) at the CES 2017 technology show in Las Vegas, USA.
PhotoNews:@HMAdebayoShittu led the Nigeria delegates to a tour at the exhibition show floor aimed at networking & attracting FDI.#CES2017 pic.twitter.com/A7j22QYAOT
— NITDA NIGERIA (@nitdanigeria) January 9, 2017
According to the minister ‘’following its success in conceptualizing 1-GOV.NG, Government is now focusing on cost savings in service delivery and leveraging economies of scale by prioritizing services that have direct bearing on the administrations’ priorities and classifying them as shared services to be provisioned from the National Shared Services Center (NSSC). ”
Government is also continuing its collaboration with the South Korean Government for the successful implementation of the e-government master plan’’, he said.
The e-Government Master Plan 2020 developed by the Federal Ministry of Communications is designed as an essential blueprint of modalities and protocols for the adoption of e-Government best practices, across the Federal Civil Service.
Explaining further, Shittu says there is a positive increase in the number of active telecoms subscribers with an increase from 148,70 million in august 2015 to 152.28 million as at August 2016, which is an increase of 5.9%. In the same vein, teledensity rose from 107.67% in August 2015 to 109.14% in August 2016, thus recording an increase of 1.47%.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the sector has increased from $32 billion in 2015 to $38 billion in 2016. Broadband penetration has reached 20.95%, while the percentage of Internet penetration has reached a milestone 47.44%, making Nigeria, second only to South Africa in the whole of the African Continent, according to the Minister.
”Government has licensed 6 slots of the 2.6MHz Spectrum for the deployment of 4G-LTE Services. In the same vein, processes have commenced for the licensing of Broadband services on the 5.4 GHz Spectrum Band and the allocation of 70/80 GHz band (E-Band). Furthermore, approval has been granted for the deployment of 4G Long Term Evolution Technology by NATCOM Development and Investment Limited to launch the first VoLTE call. ”
Also ”in the area of spectrum management, the Ministry of Communications has issued and renewed a total of 668 licences from November 2015 to September 2016, thus generating about 500M as government revenue.”
According to the Minister, “government intends to secure a state of the art mobile equipment that will be deployed to enforce compliance and also enable the detection, location and blocking of illegal users of spectrum. Effective radio spectrum monitoring would assist with intelligence gathering and support the security agencies in enhancing security and safety of citizens and the nation in general.”