Nigeria’s former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (Waziri Adamawa), will this Thursday, 7th July 2022 lead a pack of eminent Nigerians to the Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos for the launch and public presentation of the book: Nigeria DRIVERS OF DIGITAL PROSPERITY, The Trajectories Of The Digital Evolution, Sector Analysis And Players’ Contributions, authored by Aaron Ukodie, Nigeria’s pioneer ICT and Technology Journalist.
The 472-page page hardcover book, printed in glossy colours, is an experiential chronicle of Nigeria’s sojourn through the backwaters of IT and Telecoms to the revolution which inspires the present global reference of its institutions, corporate entities/brands, and the individual skills sets. Other high-profile techies expected to grace the occasion among others include Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, the Secretary to the Akwa Ibom State Government and a former President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) who has been a dogged advocate of ubiquitous broadband connectivity across the length and breadth of Nigeria.
The book’s public presentation will be preceded by the eWorld Forum 2022 themed: 4G, 5G Broadband connectivity and the Economy. The paper presentation session by the current Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Danbatta would be chaired by Dr. Ernest Ndukwe, Chairman MTN Nigeria who was the EVC/CEO of NCC when Nigeria recorded the landmark success with the award of the GSM licenses.
Atiku who is the Presidential flag bearer of Nigeria’s main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was the head of the nation’s Economy management team during the two-term regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007 and he supervised the telecom deregulation and liberalisation process. It was the regime that birthed the celebrated accolades recorded with the Digital Mobile Licensing (DML) which introduced the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) technology to the nation’s telephone network.
As recorded in the book, for the posterity’s sake, Atiku also played a key role in subverting the surreptitious plot by high-ranking government officials who attempted to throw spanners in the works in order to scuttle the GSM auction processes when President Obasanjo was out of the country. Details of the plot that could have denied Nigeria the globally acclaimed integrity and epoch-making mobile revolution and how Atiku filled the leadership gap in the absence of his boss have been intricately narrated in the book.
The veteran journalists also gave incisive details of how and why it took Nigeria about a decade to successfully issue globally benchmark GSM licenses. Details of the interests of the late military Head of State, General Sani Abacha, and the connections of the Chagouri family were also lucidly narrated in the new book.
Also profiled in the book are the contributions of the celebrated and unsung Nigerians and corporate entities who sacrificed sweat and blood to endure the uncharted pathways to Nigeria’s noble contributions to the national and global IT, Telecoms and computing ecospheres. The role of the Surulere, the sprawling Lagos Mainland community in computerised Nigeria is also revisited in the new book.
The book segmented into five sections avails Nigerians of the tricks and trials that the pioneer players in the Technology, Telecoms, and Computing business environment endured translating to the powerful statements in the fintech, Creative Hubs, telecoms, technology, robotics, and other generational expertise and milestones that Nigeria is now showcasing to the world.
The book, the first of its kind to articulate Nigeria’s roadmap from the pre-independence analogue era to the present-day digital connectivity will be useful not only to industry enthusiasts, scholars, academia, researchers, and students; avid readers will also find it very interesting as a worthy collection.