Technology
FG Inaugurates Five-Year Broadband Plan Implementation Panel
By Adedapo Adesanya
The federal government, through the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, has inaugurated the implementation steering committee of the Nigerian Broadband Plan (NBP) 2020-2025, which is to ensure wider broadband penetration in the country.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, who inaugurated the committee in Abuja, noted that the panel is expected to monitor the implementation of the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020-2025) which was unveiled and launched by President Muhammadu Buhari on March 19, 2019.
According to Mr Pantami, the new broadband plan is designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria of a minimum of 25 megabits per second (mbps) in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas.
He added that it was also in plan to make effective coverage available to at least 90 per cent of the population by 2025 at a price not more than N390 per 1GB of data (2 per cent of median income or one per cent of minimum wage).
He added that in order to achieve these ambitious targets, the plan focused on recommendations in 4 critical pillars, namely Infrastructure, Policy/Spectrum, Demand Drivers and Funding/Incentives.
Mr Pantami said that the plan also targets the deployment of nationwide fibre coverage to reach all State Capitals, and a point of presence in at least 90 per cent of Local Government Headquarters as well as tertiary educational institutions, major hospitals in each state and 60 per cent of base stations by 2025 at statutory rates of N145/meter for Right of Way (RoW).
While noting that the implementation of the new NBP had started fully and is resulting in the increase in broadband penetration currently at 40.2 per cent, up from 35.1 per cent in August, 2019, the Minister reiterated that the ICT industry contributed 14.1 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2020. He noted that increased broadband penetration will help Nigeria to achieve increased GDP growth.
He stated that other benefits of increased broadband penetration to the economy includes job creation, sustainable economic growth, and improved standard of living.
The Minister, however, noted that the terms of reference to be developed by the Committee include Develop Terms of Reference for Project Management Office (PMO), and Develop Terms of Reference for the Delivery Units (DU) amongst others.
He noted that engagement with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has inspired several state governments to adopt the N145 per meter and a few of these States have even waived the fee altogether adding that the federal government of Nigerian is keen to develop a digital economy that will have a great impact on every sector of Nigeria’s economy.
In his remarks, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta commended the Minister for the inauguration of the committee and promised the support of the Commission towards the realisation of the mandate of the committee.
The Committee which draws membership from the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and agencies under it’s supervision, including the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), World Bank, Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), among others, has NCC saddled with the responsibility of leading the team to ensure effective monitoring and steering of the overall implementation of the National Broadband Plan (NBP) 2020-2025.
The committee Chairman, Mr Ubale Maska, gave the assurance of the team’s members’ readiness to deliver on the mandate.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.
It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.
WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”
“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.
“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”
Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.
Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.
It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.
For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”
The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.
According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.
SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.
Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.
“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.
For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”
“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.
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