Dec. 9, 2021

Nigeria in a couple of months will be making history as it will begin the deployment of 5G technologies to facilitate broadband across the country,

Though the announcement of the country’s transition to 5G has generated a lot of controversies and conspiracy theories as to the safety of the technology, the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has continued to engage with the necessary stakeholders on discourses around 5G and why Nigerians should embrace it.

Following the various conspiracy theories, the Publisher/CEO, Political Economist magazine and Executive Secretary, Africa Telecom Development Initiative has charged journalists on deepening discourses around the deployment of the technology and its benefits to Nigerians.

Ugbechie in his presentation at a media capacity building workshop sponsored by the the NCC for journalists covering the communications and digital economy sector, titled: The role of the media in the deployment of 5G in Nigeria, harped on the need for journalists to engage “our audience more in other to dismantle the false theories around 5G.

“We can do more to hype the benefits, not fears around 5G. The media has not done enough to dissuade the minds of conspiracy theorists. We too must upscale our journalistic capabilities”.

According to him, the importance of 5G cannot be over-emphasised as it has the capacity to do more. “We gave life to a telecom revolution to the acclamation of the world. We can do it again with 5G fueled by the ambitious push of the NCC to make Broadband ubiquitous in the coming years. ”

“The world would not have known about the regulatory prowess of the NCC or the fact that MTN declared its highest profit in all its years of operation in Africa only when it commenced operation in Nigeria.

“The Nigerian media pushed through these messages to the rest of the world and that explains why telecoms is at the crest of major attractors of Foreign Direct Investments, FDI, into the Nigerian economy”.

The media he said further, has done it before and Nigerian media professionals can trigger a nationwide awareness among the various publics on the benefits of 5G as a partner for Development, and not an agent of death”.

“Media, as Influencers and Interpreters of events and issues should explain to our audiences how 5G will create opportunities and bolster efficiency in ecommerce, e-banking, healthcare delivery, trade and investments; sports administration and marketing, and in fact all sectors of the Nigerian economy.”

He noted that the impending rollout of 5G offers us yet another opportunity to build on the mutual partnership to trigger another chapter of Telecom Revolution, which is a BROADBAND REVOLUTION powered by 5G.

“We can do it. We did it before. Let’s rise from this workshop with a fresh momentum to deepen discourse around 5G as a tool to create a brave new world of IoTs, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and other seamless possibilities, ” he added.