Body urges FG to relax its forex policy for telecom companies

Prof. Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has called on the Federal Government to consider relaxing its forex policy for telecommunication companies in the country.

This is contained in a statement issued on Friday in Abuja by Mr Yakubu Musa, Special Assistant Media to the Executive Vice Chairman, NCC.

The statement quoted Danbatta as saying that the call was necessary in view of the fact that Nigeria was currently at the bottom 10 of the world in terms of infrastructure development.

The NCC boss observed that deployment of telecommunications infrastructure, especially the broadband was the catalyst the nation needed for its quest for socio-economic development.

Danbatta, however, assured that the NCC has the capacity to monitor the companies to ensure that there was no breach, if the government eventually yielded to the appeal.

In the same vein, Danbatta noted that his 8-Point Agenda were there to complement the three main agenda of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, which were aimed at building robust infrastructure for nation’s growth.

The NCC boss told the gathering that the commission would not rest on its oars as it was doing everything possible to provide telephony services to the approximately 36.8 million people identified as unserved and underserved in the clusters.

He noted that the unserved population in Nigeria has been reduced from 36.8 million (34.5%) in 2013 to 33.7 million (22.5%) in 2015 based on the Access Gap Study and using the 150 million population benchmark.

"Our job today, is to amplify the cohesion and collaboration required for our interventions to be notable in the quest to achieve universal access in Nigeria.

"We are desirous of seamless collaboration with all partners to build a sustainable universal access and universal service infrastructure.

"That will serve as a catalyst for improving Nigerians’ quality of life and promote socio-economic development,” Danbatta explained.