Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, has said the Federal Government will activate at least 200 telecommunications towers by December as part of its project to deploy 3,700 towers across the country,
Tijani said the towers were being deployed to communities without connectivity and would serve between 5,000 and 10,000 people each, with the full project expected to reach more than 20 million Nigerians.
The minister stated this at the commissioning of the NDPC Headquarters in Abuja yesterday. He said the initiative followed President Bola Tinubu's directive to ensure that communities across the country were connected after he raised concerns over the number of communities without telecommunications services.
According to him, the government had commenced the rollout through a project delivering 3,700 telecommunications towers nationwide, with work already extended to the Niger Delta region.
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"Each of those towers will serve communities of 5,000 to 10,000 people. These are people that are currently unconnected. At the end of this project, we will be reaching over 20 million Nigerians," he said.
Tijani said that, in addition to investment in 90,000 kilometres of fibre to expand broadband connectivity, President Tinubu had approved the upgrade of Nigeria's communication satellites for areas that fibre and towers could not reach.
He emphasised that the connectivity drive was part of wider reforms in the digital economy, noting that the Information and Communication Technology sector's contribution to Gross Domestic Product had risen from about 16 per cent to 21 per cent in three years.
He added that, if given another four years, the administration would target raising the sector's contribution to GDP to 25 per cent.
Meanwhile, Tijani said the headquarters was a property recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and subsequently allocated to the NDPC by President Bola Tinubu for use as its permanent headquarters.
Earlier in his remarks, National Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer of the Data Protection Commission (NDPC) Dr Vincent Olatunji, speaking on the growth of the commission, said it had moved from a small unit responsible for data protection into a full-fledged institution.
Olatunji said the commission had faced serious funding challenges in its early years but continued to develop its regulatory framework, eventually leading to the enactment of the Nigeria Data Protection Act in 2023.
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"When we started this commission, we had a seed in our hands which we planted and we worked hard and we nurtured. It grew and has grown to what we are doing today," he said.
The Commissioner said the agency had since recorded growth in certification, training, licensing and international cooperation, adding that it had licensed 356 data protection organisations and organised more than 220 training programmes.
Olatunji further said the commission had generated more than N12 billion in revenue and created 27,000 jobs through the data protection ecosystem, while its activities had helped build an ecosystem valued at more than N18 billion in three years.
