By Olasunkanmi Onifade

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami has inaugurated 44 members of the governing boards of three parastatals under the ministry.

The parastatals include National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST) and National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

“We have inaugurated 44 governing board members, 17 for NIMC with ex-officials members including those appointed by Mr. President and others.

“For NITDA, we have 19 including the Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer who serves as the secretary and members of the board and NIPOST has 8 members.

”We do hope you will continue to display maturity,” he said.

Pantami said the responsibilities of the newly inaugurated governing board members were to oversight and oversee the activities of the parastatals as well cascade the national policies developed by the supervising ministry.

” You should try your best within the responsibilities that have been assigned to you by the various enabling Acts establishing this parastatals, other government policies and directives that may come up from time to time.

” More than 90 per cent of them appointed today were reappointed as a result of our recommendations, as well as due to their display of maturity in the way and manner they interact with the parastatals,” he said.

Pantami said there had been some complaints from other ministries where board members had misunderstandings with the management, while completely neglecting their responsibilities.

” We must ensure that we should respect constitutional authority in whatever we do. and the boards have no power as regards to awarding contracts and Minister has no power when it comes to awarding contracts as an independent status.

”We are part of the board and the management and we are not part of the tenders board,” he warned.

“To be fair to all of you. I am so much grateful in the way and manner you try to display maturity of yourself operate within the ambit of the laws and government policies and hope you improve in the second tenure,” Pantami said.

He said the responsibilities of the Boards were already outlined in most of the laws establishing this institutions like NIPOST Acts of 1992, NITDA of 2007 and NIMC of 2007.

Pantami said government charged the new appointees to be more responsible in the discharge of their duties and would not tolerate any form of insubordination by any of the three parastatals.

“The sector had recorded tremendous achievements in NIMC which was established in 2007.

”We formally took over the supervision in October 2020, the data base we inherited was 32 million, but today it became over 87 million, within two years.

“We increased the database with more than 45 million with more than 45 million,” he said.

The Chairman of governing Board of NIMC, Prof. Usman El-Nafaty, who spoke on behalf of the newly appointed governing members promised to perform their functions optimally. (NAN)