By Emmanuel Elebeke

The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, in conjunction with Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, on Monday kicked off a Diploma training in Telecommunications Management Studies for the commission’s staff in Abuja.

The training was aimed at grooming new staff of the NCC on telecoms fundamentals, telecom  networking, consumer relations, telecoms management, law enforcement and quality of service.

The Director, Policy and Regulation Issues, NCC, Mrs. Josephine Amuwa, said the commission plans to be on top its game in all spheres of telecoms regulation.

She said the training was designed to enhance staff knowledge and understanding of telecom issues and regulatory matters.

“We want to be on top of our game. We should be the one regulating the industry and not the industry regulating us.  Industry should not regulate the regulator. We want to ensure that our new intakes who come into the organization are well verse in all the critical and important functions as the regulator.

“We made it a six-week intensive training because we intend to solidify them, make their knowledge permanent; we don’t want the training to be a flash in the pan. People go but the industry and regulator remain and as an institution NCC will continue to grow and continue to expand.

“So, we intend to ensure that people who come in new in the institution are also experts and this kind of fundamental training will help them achieve that expertise.”

On whether the training was in connection with challenges in the industry, Amuwa, admitted that challenges in the industry exist but said, ‘there is no institution that doesn’t have challenges. We anticipate what will happen and try to make sure that we are positioned rightly so that whatever challenge that comes, we overcome them. “We have challenges in the area of quality of services, enforcement of our rules and regulations; we have been coping with working on those challenges. We need to work faster than the technology, which sometimes is not possible. So we need to continuously train our people on the important segment of telecoms.”

One of the resource persons at the programme and Principal Consultant of Developmental Solving Centre, CTO, Richard Dick, said it was a good thing for NCC to impact its staff with such training as the knowledge would help move the economy forward.

“Both individuals and organizations have embraced telecommunications technology and Nigerian like any other nation are in a position to take full advantage of that growth, some of which is already happening, but the fastest growth in the fastest economy can move as well.”

He explained that the programme would expose staff of the NCC and other relevant personnel in the regulatory process to high knowledge of the sector and regulatory procedures.