Ebuka Daniel
Nigeria’s Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, has said that the long awaited 5G network will be deployed in the country by January 2022.
Pantami said this on Thursday in Maiduguri at a Town Hall Meeting held to address vandalism of power and telecommunications infrastructure in the country.
This will make Nigeria among the earliest country to adopt the technology in Africa.
The meeting which was organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture played host to Borno State governor, Babagana Zulum and his Deputy, Mr Usman Kadafur among others.
The Federal Executive Council recently approved the deployment of the technology.
Ubale Maska, Commissioner for Technical Services of the Nigeria Communication Commission, who represented Pantami said the 5G network would boost surveillance against criminal elements as well as vandalism of public infrastructure across the country, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
Pantami revealed that from January 2021 to July 2021, there were 16,000 reported outages by mobile network operators – MTN, Globacom, Airtel and 9Mobile.
He explained that the outages were due to fiber cuts, access denial and theft which resulted in the disruption of service in the affected areas.
The minister emphasised on the need for the protection of the country’s critical infrastructural facility.
According to him, a lot of telecoms installations that were destroyed in the attacks by terrorists in the North had not been replaced due to the lingering insecurity and tensions.