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Written by Oluwaseun Ayantokun Monday, 06 February 2012
Minister of ACommunication Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, has expressed optimism that a bill to protect ICT infrastructure,
as part of critical national infrastructure, will be a reality before the end of 2012.
Speaking in Lagos last week with ICT correspondents at the Youth Empowerment training programme organised by the Jim Ovia Foundation in collaboration with Google, IBM, Visafone and others she said “the ministry and NCC are working on an ICT infrastructure bill to ensure that we can protect the existing ICT infrastructure that we have from accidental damage”.
According to her, “ICT has become so important and you will agree with me there is nothing you can do without it”.
She stated that Nigeria needed to protect the infrastructure from wilful and accidental damage and that “we want to ensure there is a law that ensure consequences for those that are engaging in damaging ICT infrastructure.
“If you look at the impact of damaged ICT infrastructure, it can be quite significant in a country.”
Mrs Omobola said that the draft ICT policy which is still being hatched would be the first harmonised ICT policy contrary to the current situation in which every sector of the industry was run by a different policy.
“We set up a committee working on the harmonisation, its work is to harmonise all the existing policies and reflect a new reality when necessary in order to have the right working document. This will then be discussed by all stakeholders.
“We have been receiving comments from Nigeria and from offshore as well from industry groups and other stakeholders.
“The comments are being collated now for a public forum that will hold in March. This public forum will coincide with our regular six months stakeholders’ forum,” she said.
She said her ministry was going all the length to ensure that the ICT industry had a working document that all the stakeholders believed in, adding that the document was just a statement of intent, that is, what the government wants to do with the ICT industry.
She said what will immediately follow the policy is to developing a national ICT master plan which is a lot more broader and entails input from all stakeholders, Indicating that by June, 2012 the process of hatching a working document will have been completed.
She, however, stated that her ministry had been up and doing with regard to certain issues in the industry not necessarily waiting till the time the working document will be ready.
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