ITU’s Spectrum Management Thrills Mba, NBC Boss

Mr. Emeka Mba, director general, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has spared kind words for International Telecommunication Union’s efforts to connect people of the world they live and whatever their means.

He said that the world will never again face the nightmare of chaos that accompanied the beginnings of radio broadcasting in the use of the radio spectrum in the 1920s.

“This is due to the resolve by the International Telecommunication Union to connect all the world’s people wherever they live and whatever their means, and to protect and support everyone’s fundamental right to communicate through the allocation of global radio spectrum and satellite orbit, as well as developing technical standards”

Mba made the statement at the opening ceremony of the workshop on spectrum Management for developing countries for English speaking, held in Abuja.

The director general acknowledged the relevance of the ITU and believes the International Telecommunication Union stands as an example of how useful International cooperation could be.

He noted that the workshop would equip participants with the necessary skills and tools to effectively manage the spectrum properly, particularly as countries in African join the rest of the world to move through epochs of development, the next one of which is the transition to digital terrestrial television broadcasting.

In a keynote address, Omobola Johnson, minister for Communication Technology,  represented by Festus Daudu, director in the Ministry and a member of DigiTeam Nigeria, welcomed the participants to the 10-day training.

The minister noted that the importance of spectrum management in the areas of security, Communication, broadcasting, and various kind of electronic application, cannot be over-emphasised.

Johnson stressed the need for African Countries to manage spectrum in a most efficient, rational way such that it is made available to the citizens in a nation without interference with other applications within that nation and across borders.

The minister urged delegates to give maximum attention to the training and thanked ITU for choosing Nigeria as a centre to host participating African countries.

The training, jointly organised by the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology, National Broadcasting Commission and Nigeria Communications Commission, is aimed at providing an in-depth technical foundation to the development and implementation of the Spectrum Management for Developing Countries (SMS4DC).

The programme will cover the issues of information gathering and management relating to the SMS4DC management in order to propose appropriate solutions.

Participants are drawn from Nigeria, Burundi, Tanzania, Swaziland, Uganda, Senegal, and a host of other African Countries.