Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said it remitted N362.34 billion into the Federal Government’s Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), from 2015 to date.
The accrued revenue was generated via spectrum fees and operating surplus, which helped to boost the revenue generation drive of the present administration, the EVC said over the weekend.
Danbatta disclosed that partnership between the Commission and academics is in line to support the development of the innovative services and life-changing solutions with the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to promote indigenous contents.
“The commission has so far released N336.4 million as research grants to the academia and has endowed professional chairs in two Nigerian universities.
“More importantly, we have empowered the Nigerian youths by promoting their ingenuity and innovation in the development of locally-relevant technology solutions.
“The latest of such was the 2020 NCC Virtual Hackathon, where we gave N9 million in grant to three top promising tech startups for solutions aimed at addressing the impact of COVID-19 and diseases in thematic areas of health, community, productivity, economy and transportation,” Danbatta said.
He said that the broadband penetration in 2015, when he first assumed office as Executive Vice Chairman, was six per cent but has spiked to 42 per cent as of July 2020.
“This achievement is as a result of key policy initiatives to improve broadband penetration embarked upon by the commission.More in Home
“These include increasing the number of licenced infrastructure companies (InfraCo) to six companies across the six geo-political zones,” among others.
Danbatta said that the commission was currently finalising six InfraCo counterpart funding agreements to ensure the full rollout of broadband infrastructure on an Open Access Model.