September 23, (THEWILL) – The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami on Thursday disclosed that the ‘Five Generation’ (5G) network will be deployed in January 2022, to aid surveillance against vandalism of public assets in Nigeria.
Pantami spoke in Maiduguri during a Town Hall Meeting to address vandalism of power and telecommunications infrastructure. The event was organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed led other ministers, Borno State governor  Babagana Zulum and his Deputy, Mr Usman Kadafur and other stakeholders, to the town hall meeting
Pantami, who was represented by Mr Ubale Maska, Commissioner for Technical Services, Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), said the 5G network was recently approved by the Federal Executive Council for increased connectivity.
He said while the technology would boost surveillance against criminal elements vandalising public infrastructure across the country, other measures should be put in place to arrest them and bring them to book.
Pantami disclosed that there were over 50,000 telecommunication sites across the country, which made it difficult to man manually except through deployment of modern technology.
He also disclosed that there were about 16,000 reported outages by mobile network operators – MTN, Globacom, Airtel and 9Mobile – from January 2021 to July 2021.
The outages, according to him were due to fiber cuts, access denial and theft leading to service disruption in the affected areas
He noted that protection of the critical infrastructural facility was key to the nation’s security, economic vitality, public health and safety.
He decried the situation where telecoms installations that were destroyed in the attacks by terrorists, had not been replaced as a result of the lingering insecurity and tensions in parts of the North East.
Pantami, who urged synergy among security operatives also called on the National Assembly to expedite action on the passage of Critical Infrastructure Protection Bill for onward submission to the President for assent.
