By The telecommunications operators in Nigeria are worried that the present situation in the telecoms industry gives the impression that the Government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have abandoned the sector to go into distress stressing that what the sector needs to service a digital economy is lacking.
According to the Association of License Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), the umbrella body of telecoms operators in the country, despite the enthusiasm about what digitalisation will do for the economy, there are no indications it is ready for real digitalisation.
In a goodwill address to participants at the 2024 African Tech Alliance Forum with the theme: Leapfrogging Digital Transformation for Future of Africa’s Economy, Chairman of ALTON, Engr Gbenga Adebayo stated that notwithstanding the call for digital transformation, the backbone of every digitalisation is the telecoms industry and the infrastructure that drives the industry..
Adebayo who was represented by the Executive Secretary of ALTON, Mr Gbonlahan Awonuga disclosed that “the telecoms that we are talking about is being neglected. Maybe because government is not interested in telecommunication. You cannot witness good quality of service, and good Internet quality of service without the needed infrastructure.”
He said further, “They don’t understand anything. Everybody is accusing the operators. Are any operators lying? And these are the backbone, these are the infrastructure you are going to rely digital transformation on.”
Awonuga stated that the situation in the telecoms sector has gone haywire saying “Things are going haywire. As you see it. Most of us, when we have challenges with our networks, we tend to begin to blame the operators. Oh, the consumer will say they the operators, have started again. My data has gone. But I want to tell you that these operators are not magicians.”
While noting that the telecoms industry is stressed and distressed, he said, “They function based on terrestrial infrastructure. But even if these infrastructure are not there, we will continue to struggle. That brings me to the point that the sector is distressed.”
And while appealing to the Nigerian Government to do something quickly, he urged, ” the government needs to do something quickly about it. We are talking about leapfrogging. If you want to leapfrog and there is no place for you to do it, we are going to be deceiving ourselves? You must, first of all, repair the backbones.”
ALTON challenged the Government to make the backbone function seriously warning that “If not, what is the training we are doing? We are training staff, we are training people in the AI, we are training things like that. Some people will just come export them if we don’t fix the infrastructure. That’s not fair.”
He warned further that if the Government does not do something, all the talk about digitalisation will not work and others will come and export what we have worked for, adding that technology does not wait for anyone.
The Body regret that all sectors that are needed to actually needed to leapfrog the nations economy through digitalisation are being neglected by the Government stressing that the indeed the industry is indeed distressed and there is no need to pretend about it.
