The advantage of SIM (subscriber identity module) card registration has been severally canvassed in many quarters. Whenever SIM card registration is mentioned, my mind goes to the idea about how this will help Nigeria track different types of criminals who seize the opportunity of undocumented use of SIM card in Nigeria to their advantage.

FOR the telecommunications sector, it is raining, and the rain is in torrents. In the last few months, the sector has become anybody’s whipping boy, such that whosoever has the wherewithal to make his or her voice heard turns in direction of the sector.

AVID watchers of developments in the telecommunications sector would have known that the Federal Government has issued right of way (RoW) guidelines for the laying of cables on federal highways in a bid to make life easier for telcos who desire to lay cables for their various operations.

SEVERAL weeks ago, a conflict in regulatory roles erupted between two agencies of government – the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Environmental Standards Regulatory and Enforcement Agency (NESREA).

A little over a week ago, fresh controversy erupted in the public domain about an exercise whose outcome the nation is awaiting – SIM card registration.

A little over a week ago, fresh controversy erupted in the public domain about an exercise whose outcome the nation is awaiting — SIM card registration. The controversy centred around delays in the outcome of the exercise, especially as some networks keep sending messages to their subscribers (who had registered) that their SIM cards had not been registered.

FOR the nation’s telecommunications companies, it’s the rainy season and a double one at that. Generally in this part of the world, the rainy season is underway, and for the next few months, torrential downpours will become normal experience. That is something we cannot do anything about, since the regulator is Mother Nature whose whims and caprices are above that of mere mortals.

FOR long, one of the problems that managers of the national economy, at whatever level have had to grapple with is the availability of reliable data for planning and other purposes. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), whose affairs are managed by a 15-member board, with a statistician-general as the chief executive officer is charged by government to fulfil this need.

LAST week, the Presidential Panel on Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, headed by former head of the Cuvil Service of the Federation, Mr Steve Oronsaye submitted its report to the President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan.

LAST week, the Presidential Panel on Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, headed by former head of the Cuvil Service of the Federation, Mr Steve Oronsaye submitted its report to the President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan.

THE National ICT Week was declared open by the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja last Monday. In light of a declaration by the Minister of State for Education, Barr. Ezenwo Nyesom Wike that the Federal Government is commitment to infuse information and communication technology, ICT, into the educational curriculum of primary and secondary schools in order to empower the next generation for national development, I hereby reproduce part of what I wrote in this column in our edition of wednesday 15 February under the headline: Where are we with NEPAD’s e-schools?

THIS August will make it just eleven years that the Nigerian ICT sector, unarguably the wunderkind of our economy took a quantum leap forward when the first two GSM telcos were licensed for business.

THIS week, attention is on key ICT indicators for Nigeria as released by SCAN ICT Initiative. By the way, SCAN-ICT Initiative Nigeria is an internationally co-ordinated effort to generate suitable sets of comparative methods and statistical indicators for monitoring, measuring and assessing the impact of ICTs on the social and economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI) of the country.

WHEN the Central Bank of Nigeria announced the cash-less policy last year, it ignited hope as it was seen as one that would help kick the nation’s primitive cash economy into the 21st century as the use of credit cards will become widespread.

FOR a very long time, one issue that has helped drain the public treasury is that of “ghost workers” – a situation perfected such that people who do not exist anywhere else exist on payrolls of, especially government institutions. It is one of the particularly ingenious schemes by which public money is siphoned.