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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, yesterday, blamed the 50% increase in tariff by telecommunication companies operating in the country on inflation and rising operation cost.
Tijani stated this, when he appeared before the National Assembly Joint Committee on Communication to defend the 2025 budget of his ministry.
The minister, who noted that the hike was in tandem with broader economic patterns, said the Federal Government is planning to invest N6 billion for the deployment of 90,000 Kilometres of Fiber Optic cable. He stated this is necessary to expand the country’s capacity from 35,000 Kilometers to 125,000 Kilometers
According to him, “Because outside of South Africa and maybe Egypt, perhaps Tunisia, a lot of countries have a serious deficit in cable. This is going to become a big business. We want Nigerian companies not only to lay in Nigeria, but become companies that will provide these services for neighboring countries as well.
“And we want our people to become the employees that will go out and do this work. We’ve seen more companies like South Africa being off the back of global business. They can now create security, but not only have to.
“So this is something we focus on. On security, we’ve seen a problem. You cannot secure a society if you don’t have strong communications.
“And what most people don’t pay attention to is that historically, we’ve left investment of telecommunications infrastructure to private companies. And these private companies will only go to where they can make money with. In fact, they use a data set, which is called night-time satellite data, which will look down on the economy at night.
“And they will see where light exists, and that’s where they will put their money. Because those lights, for them, indicate economic activities”.
