This month of October, precisely from October 12^th to 15^th, a strong Nigerian delegation would be in Budapest, Hungary for this year’s ITU Telecom World, the yearly feast of telecom organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The ITU is the specialized ICT arm of the United Nations and Nigeria is a strong member of this august body. Last year the event held in Qatar with Thailand playing host the previous year.

Instructively, this year’s festival is holding in the month of October, the birth month of Nigeria. It was exactly on the 1^st of this month in 1960 that the British Union Jack was lowered at Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos and in its place was hoisted the green-white-green Nigerian flag. That journey of 55 years has seen Nigeria wobble in a dark crooked alley; failing and falling sometimes and at other times rising and shining. The nation has been through a civil war and all forms of self-inflicted contradictions.

Chroniclers of the nation’s history often find themselves stuck between painting the picture of a despairing nation with wasted opportunities, between scripting lines of lamentation or choreographing in leaping prose the story of a nation full of hope and whose sun has only just risen. It is always a prickly paradox in this month trying to situate the Nigerian narrative within the context of other global economies.

How does one engrave the story of a nation which was once the hub of textile manufacturing on the continent, one of the top producers of palm oil, cocoa, cotton, groundnut in the world but today has converted those factories to warehouses for imported fabrics, beverages, automobiles, toothpicks and sundry toiletries and in some cases to worship centres. How do you narrate the story of a country barbed and traversed by sea, lake and rivers yet is a major importer of fishes of all kinds or even this: a nation Providentially endowed in commercial quantities with the very best of natural resources from gold to tin, iron to kaolin and other raw materials yet its primary sector is comatose.

Even the most patriotic essayist set on showcasing the bright and brilliant side of the nation’s coat of multiple colours would be intermittently reminded by the ceaseless orgy of blackouts that seizes the nation like spasms of epilepsy that all is not well when the authorities assail your ears with such words like “…we have no gas to power the stations hence the nation is in darkness”. How does an unrepentant patriot consumed in his love for fatherland accept such disingenuous explanation in a country notorious for flaring (wasting) gas and one which holds the record of having the highest gas reserve in Africa? Such irony and many more leaves the soul perplexed, traumatised.

This is the dilemma of chroniclers of the nation’s history in this month of October, the month of national audit, collective and individual introspection and the month of sobriety. Yet, there is a flip side to this story which holds out strands of hope. It is the very fact that out of the darkness that pervades the national firmament, there are oases of hope, of redemptive ethos that point to a future bright and beautiful. The Nigerian telecom sector has in the last 15 years bucked the trend of inefficiency that has signposted other sectors of the national space. And leading this charge of redemption is the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the nation’s telecom regulator.

Though birthed in 1992 via a military decree, it never really made any significant impact until 2001 when it organised an auction for Digital Mobile Licenses for the GSM genre of telecommunication. Ever since, the sector has taken a great leap forward to the acclamation of the global community.

Today, at 55 years as a nation, only the telecom sector, not power, health or agriculture, has become a reference point for international agencies like the ITU which consistently benchmarks other nations against the Nigerian telecom in terms of growth and regulatory efficiency. But the growth has been largely in the mobile marketplace with an aggregate of over 140 million lines in 14 years, a record only matched by the likes of China and India.

There is still ample room for investment in a market reputed for its high return on investment (RoI). And this is the message Professor Umar Danbatta, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission is taking to this year’s ITU Telecom World in Hungary. An optimistic and confident Danbatta says he is flying into Hungary with one message to the global investing community: Invest in Nigeria. He is wooing otherwise hedgy investors with the message of Change. He assures the world that Nigeria is fast moving away from the tag of being a difficult place to do business. He says Nigeria is adopting international best practices in business processes and modules which should encourage investors. He assures that the wind of change blowing across the country is in itself a huge incentive for any investor especially those in telecom business.

The Professor of electronic engineering believes that better days are ahead for both investors and Nigerian telecom consumers especially with the deployment of pervasive broadband, an agenda he says he will pursue with unflinching zeal and patriotic fervour as a cine qua non for entrenching a culture of good quality of service. Going to Hungary with a strong Nigerian contingent of techies, business people, service providers and equipment manufacturers among others, Budapest promises to be a good hunting ground for Nigeria telecom. Professor Danbatta agrees too. If the NCC attracts more investors in Hungary it would be a fitting birthday present for a nation in dire need of a scrumptious birthday cake.