Isa Pantami
Fresh facts have emerged on how Isa Ali Pantami, the minister of Digital Economy deceived President Muhammadu Buhari into accepting the proposed NITDA Bill now before the National Assembly.
Pantami who enjoys unfettered access to President Buhari was said to have convinced Mr President that the new bill would increase local content threshold in the digital economy space, create more jobs, attract huge foreign direct investments and add more cash to the drying purse of the Federal Government.
But investigations have shown that it was all a ploy by the minister who is “notorious for his vaulting ambition, bullying tactics and acute appetite to supplant all authorities under his ministry,” as a source in the Presidency described Pantami.
However, it has been discovered that the NITDA Bill is an extension of Pantami’s bullying tactic to swamp all parastatals under his ministry especially the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, which has been the golden regulator and rated one of the best regulators out of Africa by the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, long before Pantami became a minister.
The bill has secretly gone through two readings in the National Assembly, a move orchestrated by Pantami to turn NITDA from an Information Technology development agency to an ICT regulator, thus usurping the legal powers of NCC.
Political Economist NG has discovered that in spite of the sweeping resistance from critical stakeholders, Pantami has continued to push for the passage of the bill in clear negation of extant rules and norms.
The NITDA Bill has been condemned by various stakeholders such as the Nigeria Bar Association. The legal practitioners described the bill as infiltrating and an attempt to unnecessarily duplicate the regulatory powers of some existing government agencies in the country.
The Computer Professionals (Registration Council of Nigeria) (CPN) also condemned the proposed NITDA Bill 2021 in its entirety. CPN delegates, led by the President and Chairman of Council, Mr. Kole Jagun, FNCS were at the stakeholder’s engagement, recently organized by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to consider the proposed NITDA Bill 2021 which, among other things, aimed at changing NITDA from an IT Development Agency to a regulator of the Information Technology industry.
A National Assembly source he was shocked that neither NCC nor any of the critical stakeholders including the NBA were invited to the public hearing on the bill, which from all indications, has turned to a private hearing of a public bill.
Political Economist NG scrutiny of the Bill showed that it lacked originality, critical thinking and intelligence. It merely mirrored the provision clearly laid out in NCC Act 2003.
