NCC wants more innovation from ICT firms

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has stressed the need for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) oganisations to be innovative in their business approaches in order to boost economic development across all sectors of the Nigerian economy.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta gave the advise at the Nigeria Innovation Summit, organised by Emerging Media in Lagos recently.

Danbatta who was represented by the Director, Public Affairs at NCC, Tony Ojobo, said the telecommunications industry has witnessed a lot of transformation and revolution as a result of innovations introduced into the industry by the telecoms regulator, the NCC.

He promised that NCC will continue to introduce innovation in its regulatory approach, since innovation is a continuous exercise and approach that must be adopted by the regulator and the industry players to move the country forward. “There is a popular concept that tells businesses to ‘innovate or die’. References have severally been made to the innovations, which the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, made to pull Apple from the brinks to occupy an enviable top range as a typical example of a business success achieved through innovation.” Danbatta said.

He explained that NCC had maintained effective and innovative telecommunications regulation that is well grounded on very transparent process and wide industry consultation that has helped greatly in achieving industry stability and contributed to accelerated growth of the telecommunication infrastructure across the country. He listed some key areas where NCC introduced innovation to include the Telecoms Consumer Parliament, Value Added Services, Mobile Number Portability, among others.

Speaking on the economic growth indices in relation to NCC’s innovative approach, Danbatta said the contributions of ICT to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country are currently estimated at 10 per cent. He said since the inception of GSM in the county in 2001, investments attracted to the telecoms sector are over $60 billion and that direct and indirect employments have grown with systematic approaches to the promotion of market competition in the sector.

In the area of social media, Danbatta said the internet has created a whole new online world that has led to the recreation of new communities that exist within the social media with real time interaction potentials.

Director, Nigeria Innovative Summit, Tony Ajah, said: “There are practically two types of nation today- those who are innovation driven and those who are not, but the difference shows in their respective levels of advancement and backwardness, prosperity and poverty.”
He said Nigeria was ranked 114 out of 128 countries according to the 2016 Global Innovation Index, based on the reflection of the country’s present reality since Nigeria does not invest much in innovation as country.

He called on government and organisations to come up with innovative ideas that would move the county forward, to enable it attain good global ranking in the future. Nigeria must urgently move to the digital driven economy and collectively embrace high-tech innovations toward achieving a sustainable development, Ajah said.

The Chief Executive Officer, Emerging Media, Kenneth Omeruo, said innovation must be facilitated by government, in collaboration with the private sector and the academics, with each playing their key roles to build a sustainable ecosystem for the country.

He said Emerging Media will continue to create awareness on the need for Nigerians to really embrace and invest in innovation at different levels across different sectors of the economy.

The Consul General of Switzerland in Nigeria, Mr. Yves Nicolet-dit-Felix, spoke on how Switzerland used technology innovation to transform the country, despite its small population of about eight million people. She said the adoption of technology innovation by Switzerland has helped the country to be ranked as the top technology innovation country globally in 2015 and 2016.