President Goodluck Jonathan has assured international investors in the Nigerian telecom market of a bouquet of incentives ranging from tax rebate to clement regulatory climate. The President made the promise while declaring open the Nigerian stand at the on-going International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom Forum in Bangkok, Thailand.
Nigeria has been the toast of international investors and the global telecom fraternity in the area of mobile telephony with total connected lines standing at over 120 million at present and a tele-density that shot up from 0.04 percent in 2000 to 87.5 percent. This phenomenal growth in mobile telecom has earned Nigeria a top place in the pecking order of the ITU in what is generally referred to as telecom revolution.
President Jonathan said he was determined to replicate the revolution in the nation’s emerging broadband market through a structured and carefully guided broadband deployment to be championed by the private sector. He said it was in a bid to actualise this vision of pervasive broadband service in Nigeria that the federal government recently adopted a national broadband framework which is a five-year broadband rolling plan aimed at deploying broadband as a last mile infrastructure in the country.
The President who was represented by the Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, noted that telecom has emerged as the salvation sector of the nation’s economy growing at 30 percent, twice as fast as the next sector, the building and construction sector. He promised to deal with matters of right of way and multiple taxation, which most of the telcos in Nigeria have continued to complain about.
Also speaking at the event, the first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, who also doubles as the ITU Special Ambassador for Child Online Protection, urged telcos to show more responsibility and observe basic ethics in the course of feeding their consumers with content, stressing that nothing short of adherence to high moral standards would suffice. The first lady who also featured at the opening ceremony of the event, said she would continue to champion the cause of girl-child online protection.
For Dr. Eugene Juwah of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Nigeria offers the best incentives in the aspect of return on investment. He therefore urged the telcos who are yet to make Nigeria their investment to do so. “We have prepared the ground for effective take off of the investors in broadband. We have rolled out an open access model which will favour investors and we are willing to do more for those companies that would want to take advantage of the nation’s huge market. As part of our efforts at strengthening the broadband market, we shall be auctioning the 2.5 GHz frequency spectrum as a way of bolstering the broadband ecosystem in Nigeria”, he told the audience of existing and potential investors.
Earlier, the Secretary-General of the ITU, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, lauded the leadership of the Nigerian telecom sector for providing a regulatory model which has become one of the best among ITU member nations. According to Toure, the Nigerian telecom success story is a sure proof that the best resource is not the natural resource in the earth but the knowledge resource which Nigeria has in good measure.
