Nasarawa State: Scholarship Board seeks collaboration with Commission on ICT skills

The Nasarawa State Scholarship Board (NSSB) is seeking collaboration with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills

A statement by the NCC Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka, made this known in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

The Director of Digital Economy at the Commission, Dr Augustine Nwaulune, who hosted the Nasarawa State Scholarship Board, led by the Board’s Executive Secretary, Mrs Saadatu Yahya, on behalf of the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) Umar Danbatta, recalled that Nasarawa State was one of the beneficiaries of Commission’s ICT intervention projects.

The NSSB Executive Secretary commended the Commission for the central role it had played in promoting digital awareness and skills across the country,

She pleaded that Nasarawa State should be given more opportunities to benefit from NCC’s social investments and other digital economy-focused interventions, being the closest State to the Federal Capital Territory, the base of the Commission.

“The ICT is, today, the engine room of global economy and we do not want to lag in this new digital order, hence, our decision to seek collaboration with organisations in the ICT space such as yours to work which, especially because you are contiguous to our State.”

The NCC tasked the Board (NSSB) on the need to create more awareness about the commission’s initiatives in the areas of research and digital literacy in order to provide more opportunities for people in the state.

Some of the projects are; the Digital Awareness Programme (DAP) for secondary schools, the Advanced Digital Appreciation Programme for Tertiary Institutions (ADAPTI), the Wireless Cloud, as well as the E-Health programme.

“While we don’t give scholarships to students, the NCC has continued to give research grants to lecturers and students in the universities and provided additional opportunities including sponsoring competitions involving students, as well as endowing professorial chairs in universities across the country.

“In the last seven years, the financial value of the endowments and grants is more than N500 million.

“Therefore, I will appeal to NSSB to create awareness about these initiatives of the NCC among stakeholders in the academia, particularly the research grants to enable stakeholders to leverage such opportunities offered by the Commission to scholars interested in carrying out telecommunications-based research,” he said.

Nwaulune added that the NCC has been upbeat in ensuring the implementation of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS), 2020-2030, in which one of its eight pillars, rests on digital literacy, while the Digital Economy Department has been set up and equipped by the Commission with the human resources required to coordinate its programmes in concrete terms.

PIAK