NITDA decries non utilisation of Nigerian internet service point

The Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Isa Ali Pantami, has called for the utilisation of the Nigerian Internet Service Point for proper regulation of internet services in the country.

Pantami, while expressing dismay at the non utilisation of the Internet Service point during a visit to the Galaxy Backbone Headquarters in Abuja last week, said this gave room for  many illegal online news, radio and television stations across the country.

“It is our collective responsibility to respect the Nigeria Internet Service point in order to coordinate the activities of internet usage in the country. Many illegal online radio and television stations that have sprung up today was due to non utilisation of this point.  Most of these online radio and television stations are being abused, use to canvass for agitations and causing disunity in the country.”

The NITDA boss called for service improvement on the part of the service providers, especially Galaxy backbone and urged the company to prevail on other service providers to adopt various policies of NITDA in the discharge of their services.

“recently, we got report from some Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) complaining of poor quality of service and as the regulator of ICT in the country, I personally issued a press release on this and we are hoping that service would soon improve.”

While advocating for the local hosting of data, Pantami said recent event that made Microsoft to establish a data centre in South Africa is regrettable adding that NITDA is working assiduously to forestall future occurrence of such action.

“We are seriously putting in place a strong data protection policy that would put a stop to such action. It will also aim at motivating service providers to host data locally. The issue of Data sovereignty is also critical; we are talking with some Ministries Departments Agencies (MDAs) to bring back their data to Nigeria. Some of them have come to our office and we gave them time frame to achieve this because it is secure, reliable and available for us to host our data locally,” he said.

Reiterating the need for collaboration between NITDA and Galaxy Backbone, the Director General said it has now become more compelling for the  two organisations to strengthen the existing relationship between them because of the very wide scope of ICT sector, adding that  no agency can do it alone.

“We need to support each other, strengthen our relationship and advise ourselves on how to move the industry forward to enable us deliver on our mandate.

On his part, the Managing Director, Galaxy Backbone Mr Yusuf Kazaure agreed that there is still a lot to be done in the Nigerian ICT sector, which he said calls for collaborations among stakeholders.

While acknowledging that ICT is the greatest catalyst to development and Nigeria as a nation need to move in the speed of light to catch up with technological developed countries of the world, he said training in standards and frameworks is highly recommended for people to catch up with latest trends in ICT.