FG: 100m Nigerians Have Access to Voice Services

Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson

Yemi Akinsuyi in Abuja

The federal government said on Monday that over 100 million Nigerians have access to voice services, while about 63 million use the internet on a regular basis.

Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, who disclosed this at the official launching of new online registration platform by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in Abuja, said “these statistics are compelling for any government that is desirous of delivering quality services to its citizens”.

Johnson explained that it is for this reason that one of the four mandates of the ministry is to increase the adoption of ICTs in government to achieve greater transparency, efficiency and productivity in governance and citizen engagement.

According to her, “The actualisation of this mandate is through our ‘Getting Government Online’ initiative which has the primary objective of leveraging ICTs to enhance the effectiveness of service delivery for the benefits of it’s citizens.”

“Our Getting Government Online initiative is designed with a ‘whole of government approach’ in mind, that is, every project is designed and implemented in a scalable manner to facilitate utilisation by various federal government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

“In other words, we are deploying high quality, technologically advanced and secure e-government infrastructure that can be shared by all government agencies,” she stressed.

The minister said the CAC’s nest registration portal is another validation of the whole of government approach.

In 2013, she said the ministry “developed and launched a government service portal infrastructure known as services.gov.ng.”

“We have spent considerable resources in the form of time and effort to document and digitise various services across several MDAs, while also providing links to other pre-existing applications and services on other MDA websites,” she said.

Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, while launching the CAC registration portal, commended the board, management and staff of the commission for their continuous efforts at improving the process of doing business in Nigeria.