Digital Infrastructure: Stakeholders Collaboration Will Remove Investment Barriers – Danbatta

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC), of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, has called for an increase in stakeholders collaboration to remove investment barriers in the broadband/digital infrastructure.

Danbatta made the call in a summit organized by DigiServe Network Services Limited, in partnership with the NCC, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON).

The EVC noted that the task of attracting investments into the broadband infrastructure space is a collective responsibility which will remove barriers to investment which include multiple taxation and regulation, arbitrary pricing of bottleneck resources such as Right-of-Way (RoW), time-consuming and unfriendly approval processes.

“These factors discourage investments in digital infrastructure and reduce the speed at which we provide our people with access to seamless digital service infrastructure for e-Governance and other services,” Danbatta mentioned.

Earlier in his address, the Executive Chairman, DigiServe Network Services, Lanre Ajayi, said with the advent of democracy, expectations of citizens from governments are higher because citizens rate their governments largely on how efficient and effective government services are delivered to them.

“Hence, e-Government, which is essentially about the deployment of technologies in government processes and service delivery to citizens, provides immense opportunities for governments to deliver services to citizens most effectively and efficiently,” Ajayi added.