By Okoh Aihe

IN another one week, the new government of Nigeria will be over two days old. Still enjoying the freshness of a child with all his innocence, if there is anything like that in the life of some of our politicians who are wayward for crookedness. The other significant import is that every high level player in the past administration would long have gone home, holding on to the Shakespearean maxim of the past being prologue. They have seen and they have conquered; it is now the responsibility of some of us, little fellas, to begin to chronicle their exploits in office or even judge them.

One of those top government functionaries who should be home by now is the Communications and Digital Economy Minister, Dr. Isa Pantami. Or does he want to go home?  From all indications, the minister did his bit and should be having a deserved rest, but for the controversies. There are concerns at the moment about last minute spectrum sales and broadcasters raising a cry that their business is being carved to pieces before their very eyes. This will not stir my innards for this material. Time will avail us of the veracity in every whisper.

In spite of what the minister may claim to have achieved, one particular action he took very early on assumption of office will haunt his legacy well into the future. Because that action raises a mirror to his activities as minister, whether they were genuine or specially designed to paper over some very terrible operations within his administration.

The question this raises for me at the moment is, where will the next Minister of Communications and Digital Economy operate from? To extend it further, from within the Miinistry or from the regulator’s property at Mbora, Abuja?

Dr. Pantami was appointed Minister of Communications, as the portfolio was designated in August 2019. Immediately, he took over the property built by the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, for its subsidiary, the Digital Bridge Institute, DBI, at Mbora. Was it sheer ignorance or plain hubris? Whatever it was, the regulator was helplessly arm-twisted while the industry looked unperturbed or simply in trepidation for the present or a future that would come with all its ugliness.

Perhaps one should establish here for proper understanding that the Ministry of Communications was domiciled at the Secretariat before the arrival of Pantami. Going to the Minister’s office in those days was like walking through a pantheon of the gods; it was both chilling and thrilling looking at the pictures on the walls, beginning from Arthur Prest (1951-1954), Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe (1954-1957), Samuel Ladoke Akintola (1957-1959), Olu Akinfosile (1959-1964), Aminu Kano (1966-1969), Ramat M. Mohammed (1972-1975), Olawale Ige (1990-1993) until Isa Pantami who may have abandoned them in their place of historical display and admiration to a place of opulent dwelling befitting a princely habitation.

Speaking in Dallas in 1963, President J. F. Kennedy declared: “History after all, is the memory of a nation.” The framed pictures at the minister’s office in the ministry used to present that slice of history, a rich legacy that lingers. But did Pantami tread on that trajectory of history in order to carve a space for himself in the digital ecosystem for posterity?

There is no problem with ambitions and aspirations and a burning readiness to strike a niche. It is the minister’s relocation of his office to the property of the regulator that flies in the face of modern telecommunications regulatory practices and strains common sense beyond reason.

I am sure that he should have found out by now that even if that action was taken innocently, it has gone a long way to invalidate the gamut of progress recorded in the sector in over two decades. Getting that embedded within the regulator has impaired its ability to function independently and display a high level of transparency in executing regulatory functions.

Global bodies like the ITU, World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, WTO, all encourage the independence of the regulator and the need for government and the regulator not to cohabit.  

For instance, a document by infoDev, a World Bank Group multi-donor programme that supports entrepreneurs in developing economies, explains the roles and advantages of the regulator which include: “Separate regulatory authorities can implement government policy in an objective and impartial manner. Separation from state-owned telecommunications operators increases the ability of regulators to act impartially toward all market participants, for example in matters involving competition policy or interconnection.

“Market confidence in the impartiality of regulatory decisions generally increases with the degree of independence of regulators from both operators and governments. Such market confidence promotes increased foreign and domestic investment in both incumbent operators and new entrants in the sector.”