Dr. Omobola Johnson, the minister for Communication Technology, announced that about 1.4 million students in 27 federal universities are now connected to internet as a result of the ministry’s efforts; as reported by the media. Connect Nigeria, the initiative through which this was achieved, is a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Communication Technology with the Ministry of education and the World Bank’s STEP-B project in the deployment of fiber-optic cables to universities and affiliated medical colleges.
The Minister has also said that 3.4 million Polytechnic Students would be connected by the end of 2015 in what is to be the second phase of the project.
So far, according to the Minister, 1,552 secondary schools are equipped with ICT and 1,458,880 students are estimated to have been introduced to ICT via this programme. The Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) is also billed to provide shared access to ICT services, including computer training while IT Centres have been made available in tertiary institutions as knowledge access venues, with about 271 centres already established in six federal universities.The Connect Nigeria initiative also covers the provision of public access venues, PAVs aimed at providing shared access to ICT facilities in underserved and un-served locations as well as ICT training for youths with disabilities in Nigeria, each equipped with tablet PCs.
The Minister also revealed ICT facilities are currently being deployed at fourteen institutes for the physically challenged and 222 community resource centres have been established by the USPF across the country at subsidized rates to boost internet access by the rural people.
Odunayo Eweniyi
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It is interesting that over a million students have been connected to the Internet via the Connect Nigeria project. Some more information will be useful to those that are interested in the state of the Internet in Nigeria
1. What technology was used to provide these connections; Satellite or Fibre?
2. How many years subscription has been committed to? Is this a long-term programme or just for stimulus?
3. Is the Connect Nigeria project helping to curb the proliferation of disjointed short-term Internet “donations” which are partly responsible for the stunted growth of Nigerian campus networks?
4. How many megabits per second (mbps) capacity in total has been provided by Connect Nigeria?
5. Where can someone who is interested go to view the level of utilization of these connections which have obviously been paid for and delivered?
6. What infrastructure exists in the universities to ensure that the connections are actually useful beyond the server rooms?
7. How many mbps speed does the average student get during peak hours?
8. How many mbps speed does the average student get during off-peak hours?
9. What impact has this Internet connectivity made on the quality of our Universities’ output?
10. What specific areas in Research and Education is this connectivity expected to assist with; What are the metrics for gauging our success?
11. What are the plans to ensure that the programme is sustained? Any cost recovery activities by the Universities? Long-term funding from Government or Businesses?
12. What can the public and businesses do to support the Government and make the initiative sustainable?
13. Is there adequate support from all stakeholders? What are the challenges?
Once we can make a shift towards continuous measurement and monitoring, we should see sustainable impact in the many projects that we embark upon in Nigeria.