Nigeria’s Broadband company, Galaxy Backbone is expanding its services to the North East, with an office in Gombe state to soon commence service provision.
This was made known in Gombe, shortly after the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Ali Isa Pantami, inspected the North-East Office in Gombe.
Prof. Pantami said Galaxy Backbone was set up to provide access to broadband, particularly to Nigerians, both in the public and private sectors.
He said its services had been commercialised and expanded to cover the six geopolitical zones of the country, so as to generate more revenue for the government.
“It is part of our strategy to expand our market Gombe being at the centre of the North-East and the only state that shares border with all the states within the zone with this natural position of the state in the zone the office has been sighted here so as to serve the region when it comes to broadband penetration, data centre services and many more
“Particularly we have NIBTIC 2 which is being executed. NICTIB 1 is being executed in the southern part of the country NICTIB National Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure backbone 2 which will come from Abuja up to Borno State.“
The Minister of Communications highlighted the activities of the Ministry to the provision of ICT Sevices and capacity training for private and public institutions.
“The major activity of galaxy is to provide ICT activities, provide Internet services whether it’s fibre optic or sometimes wireless services, data centre services we have tier 4 data centre which is more than 99 percent completed in Kano based on the report I have received from the center and also to provide other services like hosting the email and many more like our dot NG which is our top-level domain name,” said Prof. Pantami.
He rated the contribution of the ICT Sector high in the development of Nigeria’s Economy to about 18.4%, which had never happened in the history of Nigeria.
“I don’t project for zones my responsibility, even though I am the minister representing Gombe state my mandate covers the whole country my projection is based on National bureau of statistics they have released their report of the 2nd quarter of 2022 only yesterday, Friday, and it is clearly the ICT Sector alone, without the digital service.”
The Minister said Nigeria was today rated the most important sector that played the principal role of lifting the country out of recession, triggered by Covid-19 in 2020.
“The developed world predicted that we would exit recession by the end of 2021, but we exited recession by end of 2020, a year before the predicted time. So, the result is there, with the statistics available, I don’t need make any projection, just to say, look at the trend of what we have been doing and the growth rate of the sector along with other activities like providing digital services for our citizens,” Prof. Pantami said.
According to him, a lot needs to be done on publicity, so that every home would know about the services provided by the Galaxy Backbone to attract more patronage.
The Minister of Communications commended the progress made in setting up the Galaxy Backbone North-East Office in Gombe.
The Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone Limited, Prof. Mohammad Bello Abubakar, of the Galaxy Backbone Zonal Office in Gombe, called on public and private organisations, as well as individuals to patronise the services of the organisation, so as to have a safe and secure data being generated.
“Data, as it is now presently, it is money. Data is your crude oil, data is everything. You just have to protect it. This is again one fundamental thing that Galaxy is supposed to provide is protection to the government data,” said Abubakar.
He said the 4th Industrial Revolution was ICT based, as a new slavery and Nigeria had to be conscious of that fact, by protecting the data generated by the government.
Prof. Abubakar said while data were once kept in files, they were being stored in computer systems and if not protected, they would be stolen or taken over by others.
He gave a one-month timeline for activities in the Gombe North East Zonal Office to commence.\
PIAK
