Telecom
NCCT Urges NIPOST to Leverage PAV for Services
The National Council on Communication Technology (NCCT) urged the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) to leverage on existing Public Access Venues (PAV) infrastructure around the country to deploy its services.
This was part of communiqué issued at the end of the Third (3rd) meeting of Council held in Yenogoa, Bayelsa State recently under the Chairmanship of Dr. Omobola Johnson, minister of Communication Technology.
The Communique, thus urged NIPOST to use its post offices to deploy ICT services all across the country.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Communication Technology in implementing the National Broadband Plan at all tiers of government, has urged States in the country to sign up to the Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry for the implementation of the Smart State initiative already pioneered in 3 states namely Lagos, Cross River and FCT; and being tested in Anambra, Bayelsa, Ondo with others to follow.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek had reported that 34 States are yet to sign the agreement which will, among other things, lead to reduction in taxations and levies charged on telecom infrastructures at the States level.
The Ministry of Communication Technology and the Broadband Council chaired by Dr Omobola Johnson, is promoting a ‘’Smart State’’ initiative geared at engaging governors and relevant authorities at the state and federal level to address the issue of multiple taxation impeding the acceleration of the roll out of critical infrastructure across Nigeria.
The main aim of the Smart States initiative is to ensure that effective measures are adopted to remove arbitrary charges and eradicate multiple taxations across the nation impeding the roll out of critical ICT infrastructure across Nigeria.
In her keynote address at the NCCT Meeting, Dr Johnson commended Bayelsa State for Signing the Smart State MoU.
She indicated that the Ministry is currently collaborating with Bayelsa State in a number of areas and congratulated the Governor for pursuing a Digital Transformation Agenda in his State.
Johnson highlighted the top priority areas of the Ministry to include Connect Nigeria-which focuses on building ICT infrastructure, Connect Nigerians, ICT in government and Local Content.
She disclosed that the Ministry of Communication Technology has made progress in its priority areas resulting in improvements in a number of indicators including teledensity, active subscription, number of internet users, and internet penetration. She also noted that steady progress was being made in software industry development and ICT in government.
She assured that the Ministry of Communication Technology would provide the necessary leadership and rallying point for ensuring that the potential of the Nigerian ICT sector is fully harvested for the attainment of inclusive and sustainable development.
The Council deliberated exhaustively on the 73-page report presented by the meeting of officials and other items of the Agenda and agreed on major decisions and recommendations highlighted in the Communiqué.
The NCCT urged States and Local governments in the country to make policy changes in the areas of investing in infrastructure security and development, active collaboration in negotiating Federal, State and local government jurisdiction issues as it affects ICT.
The changes should also incorporate the establishing or strengthening where they exist Ministries, agencies or authorities to build capability to coordinate ICT that will pay due attention to ICT investment and funding as well as coordinated ICT development in States.
The Communiqué also urged Members to sensitize their Chief Executives and mobilize support for implementation of the National Addressing policy to be piloted in the six geopolitical zones with Ekiti, Nasarawa, Benue, Bayelsa, Osun, Plateau, Gombe and Anambra states as volunteers.
All states in the country were also urged to participate actively in the effort to finalise the national e-government framework.
The NCCT Meeting which considered 49 substantive memoranda in addition to a number of information memos also called on all tiers of government in Nigeria to consider the adoption of the Open Data policy as a means of creating jobs.
They also highlighted need to make data available for policy formulation and decision making as well as reducing the cost of governance and improving public service delivery and a call for the Federal Government to develop and implement a National Data security policy that would be entrenched in all tiers of government and other sectors.
Other recommendations contained in the Communiqué include a call for the institutionalization of equal participation for women and girls in ICT as a matter of priority for national development and the adoption and replication of the Ministry’s Digital Girls curriculum in State secondary schools across the nation.
The Communiqué also urged members of the Council to bring the contents of the Guidelines for Nigerian Local Content in ICT to the attention of state MDAs, ICT companies and the public in general. Other recommendations in the Communiqué include the call for the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology to approach the National Bureau of Statistics NBS with a view to mainstreaming relevant ICT indicators into their data collection instruments as a complementary means of mitigating the present paucity of ICT data.
Furthermore, they called for Galaxy Backbone Limited partnership with the state governments to extend the data security facilities in the states from the existing infrastructure to fully optimize the value of the initial investment on the facilities.
To further promote the Digital Jobs initiative of the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology, the Communiqué urged each State to provide a suitable venue with 250 sitting capacity and nominate 800 unemployed youths for the workshop for training of prospective job seekers on digital job opportunities.
States and local governments were also urged to support NigComSat as it negotiates with them on the acquisition of sites for the deployment of infrastructure to facilitate the affordability of its services.
In order to put a sustainable mechanism for addressing the problem of Cyber security in the country, Council also called on NITDA to actively work towards the development of National Cyber security Strategy without prejudice to ongoing efforts of the Office of the National Security Adviser.
Companies and entities at both the State and Federal levels were also urged by the Communiqué to have .ng domain names and to establish web presence.
The NCCT Council commended Dr Johnson for her commitment and hard work in moving the ICT sector forward in her three years in office as the Honourable Minister and noted and appreciated the efforts of many states that made presentations and shared their experiences on how they are using ICT applications for improved service delivery and greater efficiency.
African women remain among the most digitally excluded globally, with smartphone affordability and digital literacy among the key barriers. New data from the 2025 GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report, launched recently, reveals a persistent global gender gap in mobile internet use across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
It further notes that literacy, digital skills, safety, and affordability of data also remain critical barriers. The report highlights that 885 million women across these regions still do not use mobile internet, with nearly 60% of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
While mobile internet is the primary way women in LMICs access the internet, offering critical lifelines to health, education, and financial services, the pace of female adoption has stalled, leaving 235 million fewer women than men connected.
Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at GSMA, highlighted that the gender gap had narrowed significantly between 2017 and 2020, but progress flatlined in recent years.
Although 2023 brought a slight improvement, restoring the gap to 15%, 2024 saw minimal change, with the gap settling at 14%.
The disparity is most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women are 29% less likely than men to use mobile internet.
“It’s disheartening that progress in reducing the mobile internet gender gap has stalled. The digital divide is driven by deep-rooted socio-economic and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
GSMA projects that closing the gender gap by 2030 could add $1.3 trillion to GDP across LMICs and deliver $230 billion in revenue to the mobile industry.
The report, funded by the UK FCDO, Sida, and the Gates Foundation, stresses the urgent need for targeted investment and policy action to bridge the digital divide and ensure that no woman is left offline.
“The mobile internet gender gap is not going to close on its own. It is driven by deep-rooted social, economic, and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
In a recent interview, MTN Nigeria reaffirmed that its ongoing infrastructure investment is a strategic step to improve network quality, speed, and nationwide coverage.
Speaking on Beyond the Headlines with Nifemi Oguntoye, Ugonwa Nwoye, Chief Customer and Experience Officer at MTN Nigeria, explained that although public concern is valid, the company undertook several internal cost-efficiency measures before making structural adjustments.
She emphasised that improved investment is critical to fast-tracking improvements across MTN’s network.
Nwoye explained that MTN undertook extensive internal reforms before embarking on structural changes needed to support this scale of investment.
The company completed its phased roll-out of the increase between February and March, ensuring that every existing data plan was below the 50% increase, and most remained below 25%.
She also noted that customers were proactively informed about all changes, particularly when certain legacy plans were retired and replaced with new ones. “We gave customers six to eight weeks’ notice,” she explained.
“This is why it has taken us some time to complete this process, where we let customers know that at a certain date, this particular tariff is not going to exist.”
Nwoye stressed that MTN had exhausted other internal measures before turning to broader structural updates. Now, with the new pricing structure in place, the company is accelerating its investment in infrastructure, spending over ₦200 billion in the first quarter of 2025 alone, a 159% increase from the same period last year. A total capital expenditure of ₦800 billion is planned for the year.
She noted that this investment is a direct outcome of long-term operational restructuring aimed at improving service quality.
She added, “We are investing over ₦800 billion this year alone in our infrastructure. This will translate into better customer experience, reduced congestion, faster internet speeds, and wider network reach.”
This investment will support the upgrade of over 1,000 cell sites and the expansion of more than 2,000 transmission links nationwide.
Nwoye stressed that these upgrades are designed to deliver faster data speeds, fewer dropped calls, and broader network reach, especially in underserved areas.
She acknowledged the public’s expectations for immediate service improvements but emphasised that large-scale infrastructure takes time to deploy.
Nonetheless, MTN expects customers to begin experiencing visible improvements in network performance by the second half of the year.
In a sector where service quality and customer satisfaction are closely watched, MTN maintains that its ongoing investments are not merely capital commitments but vital enablers of improved digital experiences across Nigeria.
Remita, the pioneering Nigerian payment technology platform developed by SystemSpecs, is charting a bold new course with its planned expansion into markets across Africa.
What began as a payroll feature in an HR application has now become a robust ecosystem processing over ₦60 trillion annually—one that stands on the verge of reshaping the continent’s fintech landscape, Mr. Deremi Atanda, Managing Director/CEO of Remita Payment Services Limited, says in an exclusive interview that will grace the cover of eGovernance Nigeria Magazine.
The forthcoming edition of eGovernance Nigeria Magazine, a publication of the Technology Times media brand owned and operated by Digital Transformation Media Limited (DTML), will spotlight this extraordinary journey, and present Remita’s evolution as an inspiring tale that informs, educates, and entertains readers about indigenous innovation making global strides.
“We’ve become an ecosystem of rails, products, and services—robust,” Atanda, Managing Director/CEO of Remita explains during the exclusive interview with eGovernance Nigeria Magazine.
“Layering all of that with the many different customers we’ve had, typically every year we process in excess of maybe ₦60 trillion in transactions in Nigerian Naira. And this can only grow, especially as we begin to think of a vibrant Pan-African expansion. We’re at the fringe of that.”
In a compelling narrative that mixes grit, vision, and innovation, Atanda recounts Remita’s early days. “What many people know today as Remita actually started out as a feature within our HR/payroll application.
“You process salaries, and you just want to pay—so just remit salaries. And by the way, that’s where the name ‘Remita’ came from: Remittance. We just took out one ‘T’ and left it at ‘A.’”
Even the company’s logo carries symbolism of that transformation. “I don’t know if you’ve seen our logo—it has three dots, in ascending size. There are many stories in that logo. It started as a feature, and then we brought it out as a product,” Atanda explains.
Yet the road was not without its bumps. “The first time we brought it out as a product was to bid for the National Pension Commission. This was in 2004, with the PenCom Act.
“We packaged this into a product in less than two weeks to take care of end-to-end pensions as it was conceived. Trust me, that vision is still viable today. But we lost that bid.”
Undeterred, SystemSpecs pivoted. “We went back and said, ‘What do we do with this asset?’ If it’s not going to work for pensions, let it become a product. And that’s how we renamed pensions.com.ng as Remita, and it became a product.”
As demand grew, Remita expanded beyond payroll. “Some people want to do their own payroll and just make payments, so let them have a site to go to. Later, it evolved into not just payroll payments. People wanted to do other types of payments. If you want to do non-salary payments, you go to Remita,” he says.
Today, Remita has fully matured into a standalone company. “So those three things—feature, product, company. That’s been the evolution.” With a Tier 1 licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Remita is now a fintech powerhouse. “We do switching, we do payment service provisioning, we do super agency, we do terminals—everything you can think about. We provide some basic services within the payment space, including payment service advisory.”
A lesser-known chapter of Remita’s growth includes building Nigeria’s first account-to-accountswitch. “Before TSA, we had built a rail—Nigeria’s first account-to-account switch, worked with all the banks. Not many people know that story. Account-to-account. The front of it, the application, and the rail—first of its kind.”
On the pivotal Treasury Single Account (TSA) deal with the Federal Government of Nigeria, Atanda reveals, “TSA was a happenstance. The government was looking to solve a problem, and we were looking to get regulated. It’s that term people use—when they say ‘luck,’ it’s just preparation meeting opportunity.”
Reflecting on the journey, he adds, “These have been some of those moments where you feel validated, where the visionary leadership that set the business up feels the vision is being realized.”
Today, Remita employs over 300 Nigerians and looks beyond its home shores. “The vision is huge, and we’re committed to that. So, we see exponential growth, and we’re positioning for that.”
Mr. Shina Badaru, Chairman of DTML, says Remita’s story is an inspirational example of local innovation with global relevance. “Remita’s success highlights the critical role of indigenous technology solutions in redefining Africa’s digital economy,” he says.
“As the cover story of the next issue of eGovernance Nigeria Magazine, we aim to showcase how homegrown innovation is not only solving problems locally but is also poised to transform markets across the African continent.”
According to Badaru, “Remita’s inspiring journey connects seamlessly with our article of faith to continue to showcase Nigeria’s growing contributions to the global technology industry.”
eGovernance Nigeria Magazine is a flagship DTML platform with operations across print, digital, TV, events, and e-commerce channels.
“This feature not only celebrates Remita’s evolution,” Badaru adds, “but also signals a pivotal shift in the narrative of Nigerian and African technology—from survival to scale, from local impact to continental transformation.”
As Remita sets its sights on Africa, it is poised to bring financial inclusion, digital infrastructure, and innovative fintech solutions to new and underserved markets. With a strong foundation and visionary leadership, the company is ready to deliver the next phase of its remarkable journey.
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