Jonathan appoints Kazaure new Galaxy backbone MD

Kazuare

Prince Osuagwu

President Goodluck Jonathan at the weekend approved that the current Executive Director, Corporate Services, Galaxy backbone, Mr. Yusuf Kazaure should by Friday, be elevated to the position of Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the establishment.

Kazaure will be replacing the pioneer MD/CEO, Mr Gerald Ilukwe,  whose tenure ends on tomorrow, after eight years of service in Galaxy Backbone.

Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, who in a letter dated 29^th August, 2014, conveyed the appointment, charged Kazaure to take the ICT Company to greater heights. 

 Already, the outgoing CEO, Mr Ilukwe, has congratulated him, describing the elevation as an honour and responsibility well deserved. He enjoined all staff of the establishment to accord him all the support he may need to succeed in moving the company greater heights.

Yusuf Kazaure is a seasoned professional with over 25 years cumulative working experience spanning Construction, Banking, Government and Information Technology.

In 2002, he was appointed as the pioneer Managing Director/CEO, Galaxy Information Technology and Telecommunication Ltd - a Jigawa State owned ICT company. He was responsible for the planning, setting up and running of the award winning Jigawa Broadband Network.

 His passion for deepening the role of ICTs for effective governance and national development resulted in Yusuf being a key member of the initial core team of Galaxy Backbone Plc in 2006.

Kazaure as one of the pioneer staff of Galaxy Backbone, has at various times headed the Business Operations, Education, Development and States – which focused essentially on ICT4D Initiatives – and Customer Services departments of the company.

His eight years services with Galaxy Backbone, are said to have helped the company in laying the foundation for e-Government by creating an enabling platform that currently connects over 700 Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in over 3,500 locations across the country.

Kazaure has a Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Bayero University Kano and an M.Sc in Architecture from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, as well as a Diploma in Computing from Oxford University.

FG's 14bn grant for food security can only make meaning with technology as back-up

By Emmanuel Elebeke

The recent pronouncement of N14 billion grants for dry season farming by federal government, undoubtedly, is a welcome development, considering that such special grant was unprecedented, especially, when it is targeted at boosting the chances of Nigeria in achieving food sufficiency, particularly in rice production as planed by the federal government.
But how far this grant will go remains unclear, given that the Presidency is still withholding the bio-safety bill passed by the National Assembly, which is expected to arm Nigerians farmers with the latest technological tools and inputs to compete favourably with the food producing majors across the globe.
The bill is one of the bills passed by the National Assembly that have been gathering dust on the desk of President Jonathan.
Although President Goodluck Jonathan has set up a committee to vet the long awaited biosafety bill as passed by the National Assembly before he could sign it into law, the new law is expected to usher in a new era in the deployment of biotechnology to boost food production, ensure food security and reduce the high incidence of food importation.
Participants at the 10th anniversary of African Agricultural Technology Foundation, AATF seminar held in Abuja recently said, Nigeria’s dream of achieving food sufficiency in 2015 will be a mirage, unless the country adopts biotechnology in the agric sector.
To achieve these goals, they were of the view that President needs to sign into law, the bio-safety bill currently before him, which they believe would open a new vista for massive production of food for local consumption and export, irrespective of other reforms going on in the sector.
Agricultural biotechnology is the application of technology to agriculture to make, modify or improve on a product for the benefit of mankind.
When the bill is signed into law, it is expected that Nigeria with vast arable land and so many agricultural potentials would benefit more, as it would make a significant economic impact on the populace by contributing immensely to job creation, wealth creation, eradication of hunger and malnutrition.
Farmers on their part, experts say, would not require special skills or training to key into the benefits of the initiative, as they are the end users of the agricultural biotechnology product otherwise called Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs; such as seeds and plantlets, which are the same as conventional crops.
Speakers at the seminar said the introduction of GM foods processing system in Nigeria would multiply food production that would ensure food security, improve nutritive value of food, improve agricultural practices by minimizing use of chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides.
GMOs are organisms in which the genetic material, DNA has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally.
The technology is often called gene technology and allows selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism into another, also between related species. It is this method that is used to create GM plants, which are used to grow GM food crops.
While, announcing the N14 billion grants during the inauguration of the dry season farm support programme held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan said the sum was reviewed upward by 56 per cent from N9bn earmarked for the programme in 2013 because more states were now part of it and promised to increase the financial support as more states keyed into the project.
According to him, the resolve to expand this dry season programme stemmed from federal government’s commitment to ensure that farmers from October get what they need before the commencement of the dry season.
Jonathan said he would expand the Growth Enhancement Scheme to reach more farmers, adding that sometime this year, the federal government would launch a fund for small and medium scale farmers.
He admitted that agriculture remained the largest contributor to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product and the largest employer of labour.
 “Our nation shall be green, our barns shall be filled and our farmers shall prosper,” Jonathan said.
On his part, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Alhaji Bukar Tijani said he believed that biotechnology has the strong potential to achieve sufficient food for every Nigerian, one of the aims of the transformation agenda of the present administration, which is to ensure food security for all Nigerian.
‘‘The African Agricultural Technology Foundation, AATF, through its synergy with NABDA does not only ensure food security, but ensures the local farmers utilize appropriate technologies such as biotechnology. One of their key projects in Nigeria is the development of nitrogen-use, water efficient and salt tolerant rice. This is key because Nigeria is the second largest importer of rice in the world, about two million metric tons of rice from countries like Thailand and China. The project would ensure Nigeria is self sufficient in the production of rice and would boost the countries revenue,’’ he added.
The Director-General of NABDA and Chairman, Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology, Professor Bamidele Solomon said though, he believed in the ability of  President Goodluck Jonathan in sign the bill into law soon to ensure food security in the country, there was need to prioritise  the importance in order to fast-track the high food yielding process.
According to him, the new law will usher in a new era in the deployment of biotechnology to boost food production, ensure food security and reduce the high incidence of food importation. Food production will soon take an upward swing
 He said, “Having a law will ensure the safe use of modern biotechnology while protecting human health, the environment and national biodiversity.
“It will also facilitate risk assessment exercises, monitoring and enforcement measures relevant to import, export, trans-boundary movement of the products of modern biotechnology, laboratory and field testing/use of modern biotechnology including handling, containment disposal, control, monitoring and release of biotech products.
“Therefore, biotechnology research will be given the opportunity to thrive as soon as the bio-safety framework is in place. It will soon be signed into law.”
The global convention by which the world keeps watch over biosafety issues is the Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD. Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF recently hosted an interaction around this convention between experts and farmers.

Experts belief that the absence of provision for public consultation is a key flaw in the Biosafety Bill sitting in the President’s office.
Part VIII, Section 6 of the Bill has provisions for public display of applications from individuals or corporations intending to import or introduce GMOs into the country. However, Section 6(2) of the Bill indicates that the announcement of the display of such applications is not mandatory. This disdain for public participation is serious and cannot be overlooked.
They also felt that the Bill as passed and sent to the President left wide gaps that would ensure that those who wish to pollute our environment get away with slaps on the wrist sort of chastisement.
They are of the opinion that the provision of fines of up to N2.5 million for individuals and N5 million for corporate bodies may appear huge, but are actually not significant when compared with the “potential risks that modern biotechnology may pose to the environment and human health.
For them one good point is that, where corporate bodies are fined, the directors or officers of the corporation could still be individually liable and may be jailed for periods of not less than 5 years.
The argument is that there is no need for the file to remain in the President’s office, when he has set 2015 target for food sufficiency. What some opinion holders are saying is that he should simply send the bill back to national Assembly for a more critical, open and all inclusive review work to be done on it, if he found gray areas in it, so that Nigeria can truly achieve food sufficiency by 2015.

In telecom, Nigeria has potential for massive growth - Pyramid Research

By Prince Osuagwu

Renowned research and economists, Pyramid Research company has take a cursory look into Nigeria' future and concludes that The country has got the potentials with its telecom activities, to grow massively.
According to the study, the fast pace of telecom growth and large population exceeding 170.1 million would continue to make Nigeria one of the most attractive markets in Africa and the Middle East.
The study, however, also identifies sound regulatory regime brought about by the telecom industry regular, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC),as a key factor that pushes and helps to sustain the growth potential.
The report specifically spotted the regulatory architecture in Nigeria as creating more level playing field as the regulator's insistence on quality of service and fining operators that fail to meet Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) gives tremendous business confidence to prospective investors.
It further noted that after consultations with operators and stakeholders, the regulator also implemented a progressive lowering of interconnect rates while highlighting the significance of the introduction of mobile number portability. The study said this would pave the way for a more competitive market and benefit consumers by lowering tariffs.
The competitive landscape in the industry is putting pressure on operators to roll out new infrastructures to improve coverage and quality.
“Operators are investing billions of dollars to improve their services and to reach the under-served regions of the country. Industry is benefiting handsomely from these investments, with mobile revenues increasing at a rate of 4.5 per cent in local currency terms between 2012 and 2017,” the study says.
According to the report, main opportunities exist in network expansion, improved quality of service and infrastructure development.
“For operators, with mobile penetration at only 66.3 per cent in 2012, opportunities exist for operators to increase subscriber base by investing in improving and expanding their networks.
“Mobile number portability is presenting further opportunity to attract competitors’ customers by offering better deals and quality of service. Opportunities also exist in the broadband segment, which is expected to see massive growth during the forecast period.
According to the report, the industry remains attractive for telecom vendors as operators continue to invest in their networks.

Things fall apart as great Novelist,Chinua Achebe dies at 82

Late Achebe... speaking on why things fell apart

Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most celebrated writers and author of the classic novel Things Fall Apart, is dead.
He died last night in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Professor Achebe had been sick for some time.
He was 82, having been born on November 16, 1930, and had been in hospital in recent days.
Achebe is best known for his classical novel Things fall Apart. His last book, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, is still making waves.
Until his death, Prof Achebe was the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown.
His profile on the university website read thus:
“Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is known the world over for having played a seminal role in the founding and development of African literature. He continues to be considered among the most significant world writers. He is most well known for the groundbreaking 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, a novel still considered to be required reading the world over. It has sold over twelve million copies and has been translated into more than fifty languages.
“Achebe’s global significance lies not only in his talent and recognition as a writer, but also as a critical thinker and essayist who has written extensively on questions of the role of culture in Africa and the social and political significance of aesthetics and analysis of the postcolonial state in Africa. He is renowned, for example, for “An Image of Africa,” his trenchant and famous critique of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Today, this critique is recognized as one of the most generative interventions on Conrad; and one that opened the social study of literary texts, particularly the impact of power relations on 20th century literary imagination.
“In addition, Achebe is distinguished in his substantial and weighty investment in the building of literary arts institutions. His work as the founding editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series led to his editing over one hundred titles in it. Achebe also edited the University of Nsukka journal Nsukkascope, founded Okike: A Nigerian Journal of New Writingand assisted in the founding of a publishing house, Nwamife Books–an organization responsible for publishing other groundbreaking work by award-winning writers. He continues his long-standing work on the development of institutional spaces where writers can be published and develop creative and intellectual community.”  

WHAT A QUALITY OF SERVICE! Nigerian subscribers waste N31.02b on drop calls

By Prince Osuagwu

On a rough estimate, Nigerian subscribers may have spent well over N31.02bn on dropped and unconnected calls since January last year, owing to poor quality of services from the telecom operators. Most networks in the country claim to have upgraded their network to 3G and 4G that never deliver services. Nigerians using iPad are worse off as downloads are so frustrating that in a day, a subscriber may not be able to connect or download music or video.

Sorry your call can not be completed!.......What do these radios do?

This figure of N31.02 billion was roughly estimated from the Average Revenue Per User, ARPU spending of 102.3 million subscribers (as at June last year) which amounted to about N103.4 bn, in relation to an opinion poll conducted by this reporter which saw many subscribers claiming that 30 per cent of their call costs were wasted.
From major part of last year, mostly during the yuletide period and even till now, telecom subscribers in the country have had to resort to hanging on the trees and roof tops to  complete their calls. The only time this was the case was at the early stage of GSM operation in Nigeria in 2001 when the networks were just building. Then, in addition to hanging on the trees, Nigerians resorted to high antennas to receive strong signals and incidentally, many buildings and other structures were dotted with embarrassing poles, antennas that did not beautify the Nigerian air space.
The situation compelled the operators into making massive investments in network and backbone infrastructure that launched the country into the top spot of African telecom market and spiralled into branding Nigeria as one of the fastest emerging markets in the world.
Although the quality of service after the investments cannot be described as perfect, subscribers lament that call completion has never been as bad.
30 per cent call costs wasted?
Although the operators have given both human and natural causes of the problem, the reality is that subscribers are still at the receiving end, spending hard earned money on calls that did not deliver value. In fact, it is believed that over 30 per cent of call costs in recent times are wasted in either dropped calls or entirely unconnected calls.
Nigerian subscribers, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, hit 102.3 million mark as at June last year, with an Average Revenue Per User, ARPU, of N1.011 and spent about N103.4 bn in call cost within that period.
If 30 per cent of this is wasted, like many subscribers have alleged, that means that about N31.02b was wasted on calls that did not connect or deliver value.
No respite in sight
Meanwhile, the situation may still linger as both the operators and the regulator are trading blames and spoiling for war against each other. Late last year, the Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Mr Tony Ojobo had declared that the operators may be sanctioned this quarter over poor services if the Key Performance Indicator, KPI, which the commission put in place, indicated that their services were still poor.
Ojobo had said that the regulator would not fold its arms and watch millions of Nigerians who depend on the services of the operators to communicate to loved ones, friends and business associates to suffer losses due to poor telecommunications services, adding that operators should either shape up or face the hammers of the regulator.
According to him, “we will, however, take into account all those times the operators suffered disasters that were no fault of theirs. We know that there were times the operators suffered natural disasters but if the KPI says they had performed below par before those times, we will penalise them and I don’t think they should have any quarrel about that because the KPI is an agreement we made with them.”
But in a swift reaction, Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, ALTON, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo said that the operators would employ every legal means to resist any penalty from the regulator which did not take into account the spate of attacks and vandalisation the operators have suffered.
According to Adebayo, from willful damages to vandalisation, flood and bomb attacks, the operators have been at the receiving end and on each occasion, they would be left to lick their wounds.
Adebayo said that although the damages on the operators’ facilities could not be quantified on the immediate, it, however, ran into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Key performance indicators or not, I don’t think that the government would be fair to talk about sanctions now. Everybody is aware of the problems we have been facing, including the recent bomb attacks on our facilities. I think that the government should even be talking of giving us some form of compensation to help us recoup.
“We are not talking of cash compensation, rather some form of tax or import waiver to enable us import back some of these facilities which actually run into several hundreds of millions of dollars to replace. But in any case, we will employ every legal means to resist any penalty we deem as unfair to us by the government,” he added.

Where are the investments on new tech?

The irony of the whole situation is that these are happening despite recent announcements by almost all the mobile telecommunications operators in Nigeria that they have embarked on massive investments on their networks.

Subscribers have had to contend with teeth -gritting call completion rates and fluctuating network stability on their mobile phones in recent months. These are notwithstanding millions of investments the operators say they are expending on upgrading their networks to energy efficient and environment-friendly solutions.

For instance, MTN in June, announced a major development in its network expansion programme when it told journalists that it had began a comprehensive network overhaul that would gulp about $1.3bn, approximately N204bn.

MTN tagged the exercise, network modernisation and swap out exercise, meaning that old legacy equipment it started business with, ten years ago , would be phased out for a more recent and hybrid ones.

In fact, the company's Corporate Services Executive, Mr. Wale Goodluck, who announced the development with his team including Chief Technical Officer, Mrs Lynda Saint -Nwafor and General Manager corporate communications, Mrs Funmi Omogbenigun, among others, said the aim of the exercise was to increase capacity and improve services to its over 45 million subscribers.

 He even promised that MTN‘s radio and transmission infrastructure as well as the core network would be fully optimised, adding that major cities, such as Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Kano and Aba would be given special attention.

However, Goodluck did give the hint that there may be some technical hitches which may disrupt the network quality due to the exercise, but pleaded that customers bear with the situation for the gains that would accrue at the end of the exercise.

Although, he also assured that part of the massive project involving three technical partners, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE, would be carried out at night to minimise impact on the quality of service.

Just about that time,  Airtel Nigeria , had also announced investment of over $600m in just one year to expand the capacity and enhance the robustness of its network in pursuit of world class Quality of Service .

At the launch of the company's Green Site in Lekki, Lagos, the company’s Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, Mr. Deepak Srivastava, hinted journalists that Airtel had entered into a landmark deal with Ericsson to upgrade 250 diesel powered stations in Nigeria to Green-sites, adding that it was all to enable the company harness solar energy to operate its base stations.

According to him, the Green-Sites will contribute to a considerable reduction of CO2 emissions and prevent network outages associated with inconsistent power supply.

Srivastava regretted that non-availability of regular grid power supply to sites across the country was responsible for over 70% of down time resulting in poor QoS, adding that the Green-Site would go a long way in addressing this critical challenge.

Meanwhile, Globacom and Etisalat also had a fair share of network optimisation to achieve better performance.

In addition to the mega bucks Glo1 submarine cable investment, Globacom also, shelled out early this year, a whopping $6m to contract wireless backhaul giants, Ceragon, to manage the end to end deployment of its Fibre air IP-10 and IP Evolution long haul systems across Nigeria

Etisalat Nigeria also announced a deal with Aviat Networks  which charged Aviat to specifically establish a Network Operations Center (NOC) to operate 50 hops of Etisalat's Enterprise Data Network, comprising 100 radios of the Eclipse Packet Node microwave networking solution, on its network nationwide.

In addition, the company will implement its element management system (EMS), for total network surveillance, fault escalation and reporting with up to six months of performance data stored for analysis; and quick replacement of mission-critical components in the field.

This was in addition to the already existing 2-year managed services contract with Alcatel-Lucent covering the South-west of the country including Lagos, which is due to expire in May 2013.

Promos take a toll

However, just about when these investments were making meaning to the subscribers, almost all the subscribers also introduced grand campaigns and tempting customer related promotions to get more customers onto their networks.

MTN came up with a pocket of promos including the Ultimate Wonder promo which promised to give one lucky MTN subscriber, an Aeroplane. Airtel debuted with the Airtel 2Good series among others prospected to give subscribers cheaper tariff. Etisalat and Glo were not also left out as they introduced many.

But the NCC said that as good as these promotions were, the untold effects on the networks culminated to the collapse that gave subscribers anguish

On November 8, 2012, the regulator banned all telecom related promos, saying it was to save subscribers from further anguish.

The tree top, the only way

Subscribers still lament
However, two months after, subscribers still lament that unless they climbed to the roof of high rise buildings or tree tops, getting better services were almost impossible. An angry subscriber, who simply introduced herself as Ms. Clara Nduka told this reporter, “I don’t know how my operator manages to do it, but whenever I load air time on my phone, it disappears even without making a single call.
Also, I am regularly over- billed to the extent that I once made a call that finally dropped at 3 seconds but I was billed N15 for it. I think these are outrageous practices. The most annoying aspect is that when I complained, the customer service of my operator said it was because I never had a plan for my iPhone. Whatever that means, I don’t know but I have just resorted to loading N100 or N200 units only, whenever I need to make a call. It is as embarrassing as that,” she added.
Also, a Lagos State University, LASU, student, Kenneth Okpebho, described network congestion in Nigeria as a ‘culture’ adding that the best way to overcome it was to live with it.
“I have learnt to live with the network congestion because that is the only way to overcome it. You can’t imagine the heartache, when you need to get to your parents over demanding issues in school and you are stuck with a piece of metal in your hand instead of a mobile phone because no matter how hard you try, you hardly get through. Even in those rare times you get through, you will never get your father or  mother to understand what you are saying because the line boils like hot water. It has become a culture here in school and we have learned to live with it.”
The situation is even biting hard on recharge card dealers who are complaining bitterly that something must be done quickly before they go out of business.  Some of them complained that recharge card business was no longer attractive as many people refuse to patronise them.

NITDA endows 3 Nigerian tertiary institutions with N6.5m for software devt

By Prince Osuagwu

Three tertiary institutions in the country have received a staggering N6.25 million financial aids from the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, for the development of local software in the country. The Institutions are Abia state Polytechnic Aba, Federal University of Technology Akure and Federal University of Technology, Minna.

NITDA DG, Angaye

NITDA gave the financial aids to redeem two separate promises it made in Calabar, Cross River state, at the Institute of Software Practioners of Nigeria ( ISPON) conference, October last year,  that three lucky tertiary institutions would benefit from its financial endowment for the development of local software in Nigeria.

The endowment, according to NITDA would run for five years.

The institutions, NITDA said, were selected based on their performance during a national software development competition for tertiary institutions held at the conference.

Abia State Polytechnic Aba received the NITDA endowment for being the winner of the Software Design Architecture at the competition. The Federal University of Technology Minna also received a NITDA endowment for Software development excellence conferred on the overall winner at the conference, while NITDA DG’s also gave his personal award for the Best Open Source Software of the Year. The award went to the Federal University of Technology Akure.

While presenting the financial awards to the recipients in Abuja last week, Angaye said the awards were given as part of NITDA’s measures of promoting the growth of the IT sector in the country as well as encouraging IT local content development for wealth creation. 

He also added that the gesture was in continuation of its public-private-partnership model of ensuring that Nigeria becomes a key player in the global IT industry.

Angaye said that “on a personal note, I decided to take up the sponsorship of the Best Open Source Software of the Year award due to my profession as a software practitioner and the need to encourage the discovery of globally competitive critical mass of other software engineers in Nigeria”.

 He noted that no country can develop and compete at the global level at this information age without adequate and sound software base adding that the software industry is no doubt of utmost importance to future competitiveness for economies across the globe especially with its halo effect in creating related business opportunities.

For him, a study of the economic impact of the software industry in Southeast Asia countries has discovered that there was a conservative multiplying economic effect of about 1.7 for upstream and downstream industries.

End-user industries also benefit enormously from reduced cost, increased productivity and increased business opportunities.

Angaye said the target of the stakeholders in the IT sector in Nigeria is to ensure that the sector contributes immensely to the growth of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as compared to the oil and Gas sector in the not too distance future.

NSE says NigComSat-1R, key to Vision 202020 success

By Prince Osuagwu

The Nigerian Society of Engineers, at the weekend said that part of the ways to achieving the Vision 2020-20 project was to ensure that Ministries, Directorates and Agencies of government and the private sector patronize the services of the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited’s replace satellite, NIGCOMSAT-1R.

Executives of the society who visited and toured the facilities of the satellite company last week, in Abuja, noted that with billions of naira already invested on infrastructure like NigComSat -1R which is now functional, the country was clearly on its way to joining the developed world in the race for vision 20.20.20.

President of Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE), Engr. Mustapha B. Shehu (right);  Immediate past president of NSE, Engr. Olumuyiwa Ajibola (2nd right); MD NIGCOMSAT, Engr. Timasaniyu Ahmed-Rufai (far left) and others during the visit of Nigeria Society of Engineers’ Exco to NIGCOMSAT ground control station in Abuja recently.

President of the Society Engr. Mustapha  Shehu said that the Federal Government would do the citizens a world of good if it puts in place policies that could encourage Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to leverage on what NIGCOMSAT has for the benefit of the people.

“The Federal Government which came up with this project means well and after spending huge sums of money, cannot allow this to go the Ajaokuta Steel way”, Shehu added.

He also called on the State Governments, Organised Private Sector, to patronise the NIGCOMSAT facilities if they must join the rest of the world in technology acquisition and economic emancipation.

The society has expressed absolute confidence in NigComSat’s resolve to bringing affordable broadband access to the Nigerian populace.

The delegation, expressed satisfaction with the knowledge transfer of technology by the Chinese people, after embarking on an extensive tour of the facilities where the operations of NigComSat-1R, the geostationary satellite launched in December 2011 is being closely monitored and sustained by Nigerian engineers.

Earlier in his welcome remarks, Managing Director of NigComSat Ltd, Engr. Timasaniyu Ahmed-Rufai told the group of the capabilities of the Micro-Electronic Centre(MEC) and the Direct to Home(DTH) satellite broadcasting platform which enables viewers to receive a minimum of 200 to 300 channels.

He  assured the engineers that when fully deployed, content providers would have an opportunity to ride on the platform and leverage its use to revolutionise the broadcasting media in Nigeria and contribute immensely to the improvement of broadcasting in general especially that we have a few year to migrate to digital broadcasting.