Abolaji Adebayo 
In the last 21 years, a total of $6.5billion has been invested in Nigeria’s telecom industry. This was revealed by the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta. According to Dambatta, the investment has increased from a meagre $500 million in the total money invested in the industry in 2000 to over $70 billion in 2022. He said: “From $500 million investments in the sector as at 2001, the telecommunications industry has recorded over $70 billion investment till date, while the growth in the sector has been phenomenal, from some 400,000 functional phone lines in 2001 to over 209 million active mobile subscriptions, achieving a teledensity of 110 per cent, as at August 2022. “The sector has provided over 500,000 formal and informal jobs for Nigerians.
From an insignificant contribution to GDP in 2001, telecoms sector, as of the last quarter of 2021, contributed 12.61 per cent to GDP, while the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector as a group, has also contributed 18.44 per cent to GDP as at the second quarter of 2022.
“For us as a country to reap the full benefits of all these emerging technologies in ways that further spur growth in our national economy, NCC prioritises the need to improve and expand broadband infrastructure and the deployment of new technology such as the Fifth Generation of Mobile Communication (5G). “Our efforts in diligently driving this will facilitate the actualization of the set targets in the Federal Government’s digital economy policy.”