Digital economy ministry completes 2000 projects in 3 years - Pantami

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, said the ministry had completed over 2000 projects in the sector within three years.

Mr Pantami said this during an oversight visit to the Galaxy Backbone’s (GBB) Data and Information Centre on Wednesday in Abuja.

He said public institutions will not be the only ones to benefit from the data centre but the private sector and all Nigerians in the area of broadband, among others.

Mr Pantami said: “Public institutions including private ones and ordinary citizens will benefit from the services like broadband and trainings, among others.

“If you look at the facility, it is a training centre. This training centre is for citizens.

“Trainings are going to be organised from time to time for our citizens in order to close the digital divide.

“This is one area that is going to be useful to our citizens because it is a government institution and citizens must benefit from this training.

“When citizens are trained, by implication you are raising the probability of getting or being employed either by government or private institution or even by international organisations.”

The minister said there were so many opportunities in the sector, adding that citizens should not restrict job creation to only the government or within Nigeria, but to explore internationally.

“Today in the digital economy sector, when we talk about job creation, don’t restrict that job creation to only government or within Nigeria.

“There are one thousand and one opportunities out there at international levels. What is most important is to have the skills and be able to display to them that you will be able to take up the challenge.

“So, by training citizens, it will be an opportunity to increase their probability of getting employment, not in Nigeria, but even at the international level with even the tech giants,” Mr Pantami said.

He added that the data centre in Kano was already operational and preparations for its inauguration were in top gear.

The Director-General of Galaxy Backbone, Mohammed Abubakar, said that data centres were drivers of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) worldwide.

According to Mr Abubakar, “we have the connectivity component of it and data centre component of it is where you have all your information.

“As you know information is now our black gold and crude oil. Before, we were storing our information on files, which were confidential and it was only a few people that had access to it.

“Now the data is in the cloud. It is everywhere, so the repository for that data are the data centres.

“All the information you have as a country is now going to be in the data centre that is in your control.

“There is a peculiarity, which is the protection of that data centre. If you have data and it is not protected, then anything can happen.”