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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Nigeria Retains ITU Council Seat

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Nigeria’s effort to remain in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) council was rewarded last week in Bussan, South Korea, after a nail-biting election. The Nigerian campaign was spear-headed by the minister of Communications Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, and supported by the executive vice chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Dr Eugene Juwah.

According to Okoh Aihe, special assistant to the executive vice chairman of NCC, a visibly relieved Johnson congratulated the Nigerian delegates for the victory and urged them to work harder in the campaigns next time in order to make the outcome less anxious and stressful. The minister was referring to the thick anxiety that enveloped the Nigerian delegation when the name wasn’t called at the expected time.

The ITU council is the highest decision making body and acts as the union’s governing body in the interval between plenipotentiary conferences while one of the board’s main functions is to approve rules of procedures to facilitate application of the radio regulations, the international treaty governing the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and the geo-stationary-satellite and non-geostationary satellites orbits.

The 48 membership council seats are distributed thus: America (9 seats); Western Europe (8 seats); Eastern Europe and Northern Asia (5 seats). Africa has 13 seats; East Asia and Australia (13) each. Although the seats are fairly distributed across the regions, a whole lot of international politicking and diplomatic maneuvering usually come into play and this saw countries like South Africa and Iran voted out of the council.

The Nigerian Communications Commission formed the arrow-head of the country’s return to the ITU council. At a Dinner hosted by Nigeria for the delegates to the plenipot, Dr Eugene Juwah, told the gathering that there had been so much developments in the country’s communications sector, of which she was ready to export and share with the international community.

In the words of Juwah: “The Nigerian Telecommunications industry has grown in leaps and bounds over the last decade”.

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