Broadband’ll make Nigeria a superpower by 2020, says Ekuwem
By Nnamdi Ojiego
Chief Executive Officer of Teledom Group, a hi-tech solutions company, Dr Emmanuel Ekuwem has predicted that Nigeria would be an information technology super-power by the year 2020, following the emerging broadband revolution in the country.
He also said the year 2015 would be marked as Nigeria’s year of broadband harvest.
“Nigerians should be ready for broadband because that’s the next revolution.
That’s why I said that we will mark the year 2015 as year of Nigeria’s broadband harvest, while in the year 2020, we will have a Nigerian digital banquet. By that year, we will be a super power.”
Dr Ekuwem
Dr Ekuwem who was assessing the growth and development of ICT sector in the last 50 years of Nigeria’s independence said the country has done well in the sector particularly in the last ten years.
According to him, ICT is to the national economy what central nervous system is to the human body, stressing that the growth recorded by individual companies and by extension, Nigerian economy , was enabled by ICT.“The contribution in the last ten years has been wonderful.”
He said ICT is building bridges between people, institutions and government through the transmission of information, data or knowledge from the calling party to the called party, thereby, giving the people the power of knowledge.
Continuing, Dr Ekuwem stated that every Nigerian has benefited from the narrow-banded revolution. He added that the next revolution would be broadband where there will be sufficient broadband infrastructure penetration of every part of Nigeria, where every home and office will be connected with broadband facilities to allow for teleconferencing, tele-health, office automation, among others.
The Teledom boss however predicted that if broadband is sufficiently encouraged and deployed, it will wipe out poverty in the land.
“This broadband revolution we are about to witness, like GSM, will wipe out poverty in Nigeria when it is sufficiently encouraged and deployed. The introduction of GSM has contributed to the development of the economy. It has created lots of jobs”, he said.
