NCC remitted N362.34bn into Consolidated Revenue Fund —Danbatta

The Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Umar Danbatta, said on Friday the commission had remitted N362.34 billion into the Federal Government’s Consolidated Revenue Fund since 2015.

Danbatta, who disclosed this during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja, said the revenue was realised through spectrum fees and operating surplus.

These, he added helped to boost the revenue generation drive of the present administration.

Danbatta also said that NCC had continued to collaborate with academics to support the development of the innovative services and life-changing solutions with the use of information and communications technologies to promote indigenous content.

He said: “The commission has so far released N336.4 million as research grants to the academia and has endowed professional chairs in two Nigerian universities.

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“More importantly, we have empowered the Nigerian youth by promoting their ingenuity and innovation in the development of locally-relevant technology solutions.

“ The latest of such was the 2020 NCC Virtual Hackathon, where we gave N9 million in grant to three top promising tech startups for solutions, aimed at addressing the impact of COVID-19 and diseases in thematic areas of health, community, productivity, economy, and transportation.’’

Danbatta said the broadband penetration when he first assumed office in 2015 was six percent.

He added that the broadband penetration as at July was 42 percent.

“This achievement was as a result of key policy initiatives to improve broadband penetration embarked upon by the commission,” the NCC chief added.

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