NCC, LBS consider collaboration on capacity building

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Pan-Atlantic University’s Lagos Business School are considering forming a partnership that would result in the development of customized capacity-building interventions and the overhauling of existing LBS training courses to address critical areas of the Commission’s human capital development needs.

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, emphasised the importance of such collaboration during a visit of an LBS delegation led by the School’s Director, Executive Education, Victor Banji, to the Commission’s Head Office in Abuja recently.

The EVC communicated through the NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Executives, Adeleke Adewolu, who received the LBS delegation (together with other top management).

Adewolu told the visiting delegation that NCC is continually investing in staff training as part of its plan to develop the managerial and technical capabilities needed to manage Nigeria’s ever-changing telecoms regulatory environment.

While LBS has been a training partner of NCC for many years and currently provides some capacity building classes to Commission staff, Adewolu believes it is necessary to expand the training scope by ensuring that other customized programs that target specific needs of the Commission’s human capital are designed by the School in collaboration with the NCC team to meet strategic objectives and strengthen the two organizations’ relationship.

Courses on performance appraisal management, policy formulation and execution, risk management, technical report writing, telecoms-related training, tariff and competition management, as well as basic policy formulation and implementation, social media training, and audio-visual editing, are among the topics of interest to the Commission.

Other areas of focus in meeting the sector’s educational needs, according to Adewolu, include developing indigenous digital skills, sponsoring hackathons, providing research grants to academia, endowing professorial chairs in universities, and accelerating the deployment of digital infrastructure across the country to boost digital literacy and skills for Nigeria’s socio-economic development.

Speaking earlier on the purpose of the visit to the Commission, Banji of LBS, said the business school wishes to serve as a strategic capacity development partner to NCC for its teaming staff; revisit LBS’s existing MoU for necessary enhancements; as well as offer corporate governance, board leadership and management development programmes to enhance corporate effectiveness.

Banji also commended the NCC for its role in ensuring effective digital transformation in Nigeria. “As the Commission responsible for creating an enabling environment for telecom operators and allied stakeholders in the industry, as well as ensuring the provision of qualitative and efficient telecommunications services throughout the country, NCC has earned a reputation as a foremost Telecom regulatory agency in Africa,” Banji said.

In addition, the LBS Executive stated that while his organisation will continue to play a prominent and leading role in building leaders with integrity for Nigeria, Africa, and the world, it also believes that with effective directors and leaders in the public sector organisation such as the NCC, Nigeria will be managed more efficiently for greater value and sustainable growth.

“Our conviction at LBS is that telecommunications penetration is one of the critical developments required to transform poverty into prosperity. Our thesis is simple: the access to and use of mobile telephony contributes to the health of the population and efficiency of the economy. It is equally a lever for poverty reduction as contained in Goal One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Banji declared to emphasize the centrality of telecoms as an enabler of development.