Alliance organises forum on Nigeria’s communication satellite Bill

Aimed at creating awareness among stakeholders and the public, the forum will reveal to participants why Nigeria needs a law on NigComSat.

According to Aaron Ukodie, the chairman of the ICT Publishers Alliance, the one-day forum is an aspect of the alliance objective of creating a meeting point where public consciousness industry issues are discussed in order to bring about participatory engagements.

He said stakeholders from both private and public sectors, including ministry heads, representatives of departments and agencies, CEOs of CT companies, telecom analysts, lawyers, journalists, trade industry associations and members of the academic community, would be the forum.

If the bill, which has already been approved by the lower chamber of the National Assembly, is passed into law, it will bring about the transmogrification of NigComSat into an established corporation.

According to Nigeria’s legislative law, the Senate has to approve the bill before it is sent to President Goodluck Jonathan for assent.

One of the objectives of the bill is to position NigComSat Corporation to become more decisive and effective in the highly competitive global communication satellite terrain that it shares with lots of companies that are owned by other governments and some private bodies.

Currently, NigComSat Limited, a Nigerian government owned organization with the objective of launching and managing the nation’s communications satellites has a communication satellite called NigComSat 1R in orbit. The company also plan to launch two other Satellites, NigComSat 2 and 3.

Being the continent’s first communication satellite in space, NigComSat 1R has footprints in 45 countries. The satellite was designed to provide backbone connectivity bandwidth for Nigeria and other African countries that are currently experiencing scarce and expensive bandwidth.