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One of the proudest moments in the history
of the Nigerian education sector was the successful implementation and
commissioning of the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN).
Being the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan
Africa, the pomp and pageantry that accompanied the unveiling event seemed
justified and earned. The network
which boasts 465mbps (megabits per second) of internet capacity represented 20
times the average connectivity capacity leveraged by the universities.
This was a project conceptualized, deployed
and managed by Nigerians under a consortium of indigenous companies including
CWG Plc, Airtel, Medalion, Resourcery and Phase 3; finally, a
project for us by us.
The idea of the NgREN was conceptualized as
far back as 2004. After a long period of dormancy, it was revived under the
auspices of the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) and the Committee of
Vice Chancellors (CVC) in January 2010.
The objective was for a Research and
Education Network that will connect all Higher Institutions of Learning
together, and to the global Research and Education Network. The achievement
made Nigeria the first in
sub-Saharan Africa to join the league of countries in Europe and America that
had functional Research & Education Networks.
A catalytic fund was secured from the World
Bank as grant, and counterpart funding by the Federal Government in mid-2012
for the first phase of the project, while the procurement cycle was concluded
in February 2013.
The first
phase of the project which connected 27 Universities,
the CVC and the NUC, with over one million users, delivered 155mbps capacity to each university
and connected to the Multiprotocol Layered Switch core network, which had a
10Gbps capacity, as well as 465mbps internet capacity, providing high
definition telepresence capabilities for real-time collaboration, voice over
internet protocol, shared access to research content and joint experimentation
projects.
The second phase was planned to cover five
more clusters of about 100 institutions and five million users. Subsequent
phases were to cover all higher education institutes numbering over 600;
Federal, State and Private.
The network was to be connected to the
London Open Exchange via an international private leased circuit, and offer
additional services such as web hosting, unified communication, digital library
collection, video bridging and archiving services.
This indeed would have afforded Nigerian
Universities the opportunity to take a quantum leap in standards, and
significantly improved their low
ranking in quality of teaching and research output, and thereby bringing them
closer to their global peers.
But alas, this is not to be, as the much
heralded NgREN has been shut down for the past eleven months due to non-payment
of the segment bandwidth fees. The consortium of local providers have however,
left all the equipment intact in good faith, awaiting the provision of
bandwidth to restore services.
Apart from the immense benefit in value and
standardization, the economies of scale of the project saves the universities
immense costs, as embarking individually on such a project will be grossly
suboptimal and prohibitively expensive.
Nigeria has a long history of poor project
execution and abandonment. According to journalists Chuka Uroko and Joshua
Bassey, in the past couple of years alone, it is estimated that over 11,886
federal government projects with an estimated value of N7.7trillion have been
abandoned.
Should we start singing a funeral dirge to
a well conceptualized and implemented system as the NgREN, with all its
benefits after spending so much of tax payers' money on it? By this action of
omission or commission we would have inadvertently reversed the solid gains
made in the broadband transformation agenda, and shut our youth from the
emerging digital economy.
The importance of broadband to the digital
economy and social development cannot be overemphasized. This is underscored by the open letter from
the Global Broadband Commission to the G20 leaders’ meeting as far back as 2012,
wherein they enumerated the importance of broadband in moving the global
economy onto a higher growth trajectory, and in generating sustainable and
social and economic growth of all nations, especially literacy development to address
inequity and deliver inclusive growth for all. In particular, they argued that broadband
enabled technologies are simulating fresh innovation and inspiring a new
generation of digital entrepreneurs. The digital era will produce a whole new
range of digital careers and industries of the future. Broadband reduces
barriers to entry, offering opportunities for small and medium enterprises to
challenge existing hierarchies, to innovate, compete and grow.
The targets of the NgREN were to make
broadband universal among our youth in higher institutions and their
surrounding communities, make it affordable, connect homes and businesses, and get
more people online. In essence, it would have enabled our institutions to have
the same opportunities to learning as those in the developed world, and also
have the same impact on their communities as is currently witnessed in places
such as Silicon Valley in America.
With such nonchalance to educational
development in our country, it is no surprise that none of our local
universities is included in the ranking of the world’s best 1,000. Tertiary
education in Nigeria has suffered from long periods of neglect to the extent
that parents would rather take their children to countries like Ghana, UK, US
and Canada. It is estimated that Nigerians studying in British and American
Universities have spent over N137billion on tuition and living expenses in the
last two academic sessions. If the over 71,000 Nigerian students who pay
tuition fees in Ghana were to contribute the N160billion they spend annually,
they would account for about 40 per cent of the Nigerian education budget.
According to Mr. Ian Stewart, a member of the British Parliament, there are
about 30,000 Nigerian students in the UK alone.
In the wake of the expressed resolve of the
Muhammadu Buhari led federal government to make public institutions more
accountable and responsive to the needs of the society, it is expedient to
immediately revive the NgREN project, and in the medium to long term properly
situate it, including exploring Private, Public Partnership to ensure that a
laudable project such as this does not die an avoidable death. We should as a
nation learn to stop being wasteful in the face of acute scarcity, and make the
most of our scare resources.
*Austin
Okere is the Founder of CWG Plc & Entrepreneur in Residence at CBS, New
York. Austin Okere is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors of Nigeria, and
serves on the World Economic Forum Business Council on Innovation and
Intrapreneurship
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