The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), PhD, FNCS, FBCS, FIIM resumed office as Minister on the 21 of August, 2019 The Communications and Digital Economy sector has recorded a number of unprecedented achievements under his leadership. For example, the sector played a pivotal role in lifting the Nigerian economy out of recession, with the ICT sector recording the highest growth rate in the 4 Quarter of 2020 (14.70%), as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) th and stated by the President.
This growth rate was the only double-digit growth rate and it exceeded the aggregate growth rates of all the 2 to the 7 fastest growing sectors. The ICT sector also had the highest growth nd th rate in the year 2020 and the 1 Quarter of 2021. It is also noteworthy that the st telecommunications sub-sector grew at 15.90% and this was its highest growth rate over the past decade. Additionally, the Ministry and its parastatals have generated over N1 Trillion for the Federal Government in less than 2 years, this translates to an average of about N44 Billion every month or over N1.4 Billion every day! For example, about N360 Billion of this revenue was largely from Spectrum, allocated by the National Frequency Management Council (NFMC), under the Chairmanship of the Minister, to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for commercial purposes. Another over N600 Billion was paid as taxes by ICT Companies to the account of the Federal Government through the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
Over the last 2 years, a significant number of National Policies have been developed to create an enabling environment for the sustainable growth of the Communications and Digital Economy Sector. This has led to the resolution of challenges that had lingered for close to a decade. Sixteen (16) of these National Policies have been developed and over a dozen of these are already being implemented. As part of the implementation of these policies, over 1,667 projects/centres have been established, and an additional 455 are ongoing.
Over 219,000 Nigerians have directly benefited from training on digital skills and this number does not include several others that have benefited from such trainings indirectly. Furthermore, there have been over 61 million unique NIN enrollments. Almost all the achievements here are unprecedented.
A succinct list of some of these achievements has been captured in the following document (click to download).