The Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson has said that, her ministry is working tirelessly to create an enabling environment that will attract more investors into the sector.
Johnson who stated this in Abuja recently, notes that creating an attractive environment will also eliminate the constraints associated with telecoms business, whether in procurement or deployment of base stations so as to attract more investors into the economy.
In her words, “to increase the speed of the internet, we are creating an enabling environment that will allow network operators and infrastructure providers to be able to lay fiber optic cables all across the country in a most expedient manner.”
On the issue of Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), and National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), the minister categorically stated that what NCC did, concerning fining some of the GSM firms is not about profitability. She said there is an on-going process to harmonise the government agencies.
According to her, “we are harmonising the regulation of base station approval and we want to make sure that shutting base station is the last resort because this infrastructure is very critical. You cannot operate a business without ICT”.
While adding that, “what we are doing in addition to harmonising the standards for base station approval is we are also working on what we call the critical national infrastructure bill but in the main time, we are working with the attorney general of the federation to see if we can get a gazette guideline”.