The Nigerian Education Research Network (NgREN) is faced with system collapse as Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) the owners of the network could not afford the financial muscle needed to purchase bandwidth for the network to operate, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.
In this regards that Mr. Austin Okere, group managing director, Computer Warehouse Group plc a member of the consortium that built the network has called on stakeholders in the private and public sectors of the economy to contribute their quota towards ensuring that the Network is not allowed to rot away as a white elephant project.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek had reported some months back that the Network was finding it difficult to operate at full capacity as a result of scarcity of fund a situation that made NUC to seek the use of Tertiary Educational Trust Fund (TETF) for the payment of bandwidth of NgREN.
Okere stated this at the recent Computer Warehouse Group Plc Closing Gong Ceremony held on the trading floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) building in Lagos.
According to Mr. Okere, “NgREN is a research network platform built by a consortium of indigenous technology companies. It aims at making affordable broadband available to Nigerian universities and their communities as well as serve as a collaborative network that will allow for knowledge sharing and research collaboration. The first phase of the project which was launched in 2013 connected 27 universities and about 1 million staff members, faculty and students.”
He noted that the survival of the NgREN has been threatened by the failure of the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) to pay for its annual bandwidth fees. According to Mr. Okere, “the World Bank and the Federal Government had financed the project and it received international acclaim at the 2014 World Economic Forum summit in Tianjin, China.
