Business
- Anayo Ezugwu
THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, is repositioning the telecom sector to improve research activities in the country. The NCC said despite the sector contributing an average of 9 percent to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, it has capacity to contribute to the expansion of knowledge in the academia and consequently profit from such contribution.
At the inauguration of the Inter-Agency committee for the evaluation of 2017 research proposals from the academia, on Wednesday, September 13, Umar Danbatta, executive vice chairman and chief executive, NCC, said the commission has created a department of research and development to consolidate research activities in the sector. This means that research activities will attract priority attention going forward, he said.
Danbatta said the programme is vital to the telecommunications industry and also very valuable to the academic community by way of adding value to research output. He said finding local solutions to the challenges of the industry is a policy that is very dear to the commission and this is very much in tandem with the policy of the Buhari administration for Nigerians to rise up and find enduring solutions to the challenges facing the country.
“Our choice has been to deliberately utilise the capacity resident in the academia and to redirect it towards getting involved in research activities that can impact on business and society leading to the development of new products and services for the entire industry. This gathering underlines the importance of the foregoing, and to point a way to the direction we are headed.
“In my communications with Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities and in our recent Stakeholders Consultative Forum with Academia which held in Abuja, here in the month of July, I have had to point out some recent developments in the Commission which include: creating a Department of Research and Development to consolidate all research activities. That means research activities will attract priority attention going forward.
“It should be very evident therefore that although the Commission’s engagement with academia has been on for a couple of years, a fresh impetus has thus been added to ensure that such an engagement becomes very robust, productive and beneficial to the various stakeholders. Are we on the right track? The enthusiastic attendance of Vice Chancellors drawn from 61 universities across the country on the advice of the National Universities Commission, NUC, and the frank discussions and contributions at our Stakeholders Forum with Academia, constantly reminds me that we are on the right track. For a whole day, we all discussed the overriding importance of the much expected relationship between the gown and industry and how best to appropriate the products of that relationship,” he said.
– Sept 15, 2017 @ 11:58 GMT |
Tags: NCC Nigerian Communications Commission Umar Danbatta Vice Chancellors
