Dr. Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, has announced that the country’s Fifth Generation (5G) network will be operational by January 2022, assisting in the surveillance of public infrastructure degradation.
Pantami stated this during a town hall meeting in Maiduguri, Borno state capital, to address the vandalism of electrical and communications facilities.
The ceremony, which was organized by the Ministry of Information and Culture, was attended by Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno state and his Deputy, Mr. Usman Kadafur, as well as other stakeholders, according to the Nigerian News Agency.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, led the other panelists in the town hall discussion.
Pantami, who was represented by Mr Ubale Maska, Nigeria Communication Commission Commissioner for technical services, said the 5G network was recently approved by the Federal Executive Council for increased connectivity.
While the technology would increase monitoring of criminal elements causing damage to public infrastructure across Nigeria, he stressed that other measures should be put in place to apprehend them and bring them to justice.
The minister claimed that there were over 50,000 telecommunication installations around the country, making it difficult to man manually unless contemporary technology was deployed.
From January to July 2021, there were approximately 16,000 recorded outages by mobile network carriers MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9Mobile.
According to him, the outages were caused by fiber cutting, access denial, and theft, causing service disruption in the impacted locations.
He stated that the critical infrastructure facility’s security, economic vibrancy, and public health and safety were all key to the nation’s security, economic vitality, and public health and safety.
He bemoaned the fact that, as a result of the persisting insecurity and tensions in sections of the North-East, telecoms installations that were vandalized in terrorist attacks had not been rebuilt.
He also asked the National Assembly to pass the Critical Infrastructure Protection Bill as soon as possible so that it may be submitted to the president for approval.
