Nigeria’s foremost digital capacity building institution, the Digital Bridge Institute(DBI), is in desperate need of help from its critical stakeholders to achieve the original mandate envisioned for it by its founding fathers.
The DBI was launched in the wake of the phenomenal worldwide growth of the Telecommunications (Telecoms) and Information Communications Technology (ICT) sectors, which was especially well noted in Nigeria. Led by the successful auction of Digital Mobile Licensing by independent telecommunications regulatory authority, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), and the subsequent roll out of mobile services, increased number of operators, and significant increased private capital investment, the sector as a whole had been challenged by a dearth of trained and suitably qualified human resources.
Acknowledging the need to continue to foster the rapid development and growth of the Nigerian Telecommunications marketplace, as well as the potentially significant vulnerability as lack of human resources could pose, the NCC established DBI in May 2004.
To our mind, the original mandate of the DBI is captured in its mission and vision statements and reinforced by its core values. DBI’s Mission is: Developing functional capacity in ICT, while its Vision is: To be a Centre of Excellence for ICT innovation and capacity building.
DBI’s core values captured by the acronym iRIDE, embody the guiding principles for the Institute’s operations. These are as follow:
1. Integrity – the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
2. Responsiveness – the quality of reacting quickly and positively.
3. Innovation – the action or process of innovating.
4. Dynamism – vigorous activity resulting in progress.
5. Excellence – the quality of being outstanding or extremely good.
For many organisations, including the DBI, once the vision and mission statements are clear and unambiguous, it becomes incumbent on successive organizational leaderships, to as it were, interpret the vision and mission, true to the original intents and purposes, as laid out by the creators. But those who should know and actually know about what it takes to preserve institutional memory, will always talk about the importance of “having good vibes from the top to enable successive leaders do what they ought to do.”
We will avoid leadership stacking at the DBI. To the best of the knowledge available to us, both past and present leaderships at the DBI did their best and are doing their best to ensure the attainment of the institution’s original mandate. The current President/CEO of DBI Prof. Engr. Mohammed Ajiya assumed office in 2019.
Hear what he had to say regarding the institution he inherited: “ I am pleased to introduce the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI); Nigeria’s foremost Centre of Excellence in Information and Communications Technology Training and Education with campuses in Abuja, Lagos and Kano as well as Yola, Asaba and Enugu yet to be commissioned.
“DBI Training offerings are world-class as we strive to maintain the highest standards within the dynamic ICT industry. Our courses are designed to be directly relevant to current business, technical, managerial and commercial operations with emphasis on “best practices” world – wide. Whether your desire is to be an entrepreneur or to be part of an organizational team, our courses provide sufficient academic and professional preparation.
“The Institute’s ultra-modern facilities which include fully equipped training rooms, multimedia teaching aids, video conferencing systems, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Telecom Laboratory and Digital Resource Library guarantee a cutting-edge learning experience.
“Our community of students is diverse, from aspiring young graduates to practicing professionals in several sectors. Studying at our Institute will afford you the opportunity of learning about the business and social culture of the Nigerian people through the cross section of participants and students enrolled in our programmes. Commencing this year, DBI has launched a bold e-learning programme titled DELTA (Digital e-learning Training Arena). Our participants are invited to take advantage of the free ICT programmes offered, in this testing phase of the project. Online Education is the new paradigm and DELTA is the product of the future that offers our clients opportunity for upscaling to remote locations and at their pace.
Since 2004, the DBI has trained over 60,000 professionals which cut across diverse sectors (both private and public).
Apart from training, the Institute aims to pilot initiatives such as indigenous software development, research with particular focus on cybercrime & security and electronic multimedia advancements using the instrument of ICT.
We invite you to empower yourself by enrolling at the DBI. We look forward to an opportunity of providing an excellent and rewarding experience.”
Let’s inform also that before his appointment as the President of the Digital Bridge Institute, Prof. Ajiya was a member of the DBI governing board and former Director of ICT Bayero University, Kano, the same institution where the current Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer(EVC/CEO) of the NCC, Professor Umar Danbatta, was poached from and served as the Vice President of DBI before he was confirmed as the EVC/CEO in 2015.
We also understand that Professor Aliya was carefully chosen, after a rigorous selection process that involved shortlisting, written assessment and interview. So it is very safe to assume there is no competence deficit as far as headship of the DBI is concerned coupled with the fact that his hirers were satisfied: “We are confident that DBI will gain from his strong Telecommunication and ICT background.”
We agree with the argument that though the mandate of the DBI keeps evolving with time, the original mandate is essentially to build ICT capacity for the economy(Digital Economy, that is). Speaking with The Communicator, a former Administrator of the DBI and currently Director of Public Affairs(DPA) at NCC, Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde said regarding the institution’s mandate: “DBI has continuously and deliberately invested in fulfilling that mandate building that manpower and infrastructure requirement….”
So, if the foregoing is anything to go by, why would anybody be calling for the fortification of the DBI to achieve its original mandate? The DBI is supposed to be the capacity-building subsidiary of the NCC, but is it being?
Speaking recently at a One-Day Summit to commemorate 20 Years of Telecommunications Revolution in Nigeria (2001 – 2021),put together by Compact Communications Limited, with the consent of the Nigerian Communications at the MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, October 28, 2021, a former Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission, under whose watch, the DBI was established, and currently Chairman of MTN Nigeria, Dr. Ernest Ndukwe said of the DBI: “Actually, the idea was the training of manpower… I must confess that it hasn’t been as successful one would have wanted it to be, but it is providing some impetus to what is happening to many institutions around the country. And, I still have the belief that the DBI has a lot of potentials because of the big campuses we have in Kano and Lagos and I think a lot can be done in putting these places to use.” Needless to emphasise that Dr. Ndukwe is a renown telecommunications authority whose greenflags and redflags on ICT issues and trends, deserve being taken notice of.
On March 18, 2022, the NCC put out a statement on its website(and this has been widely reported in both conventional and non conventional media) headlined: NCC, LBS Mull Collaboration on Capacity Building. Look carefully at the illustrating photograph to that communication and you will not find a DBI face on it. If DBI is truly the capacity-building subsidiary of the NCC, the absence of the face of the current DBI President/CEO, admittedly, is not good enough optics! It is like allowing a soccer match commissioner to inspect clubs without their captains!
The NCC EVC/CEO, Prof Umar Garba Danbatta spoke through NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management, Adeleke Adewolu, who received the LBS delegation (alongside other senior management staff of the Commission).
Addressing the visiting team, Adewolu said NCC constantly engaged in staff training as part of its strategy to build managerial and technical skills required to manage the ever-dynamic telecoms regulatory environment in Nigeria.
Adewolu said while LBS had been a training partner of NCC over the years and currently provided some classes of capacity building to staff of the Commission, it had become necessary to expand the training scope by ensuring that other customized programmes that targeted specific needs of Commission’s human capital were designed by the School in collaboration with NCC team to meet strategic objectives and enhance the relationship of the two organisations.
Among the areas of interest to the Commission, according to Adewolu, are courses on performance appraisal management, policy formulation and execution, risk management, technical report writing, telecoms-related training, tariff and competition management, as well as basic training on policy formulation and implementation, social media training, audio-visual editing, among others.
“I thank the LBS for its collaboration with NCC over the years in the area of human capital development. However, we expect that LBS will work with NCC to see how we can collectively overhaul the existing courses and bring new course to NCC’s attention which we would, in turn, subject to our training need analysis (TNA).
This may result in a review of our existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) towards making our relationship much stronger and more mutually beneficial,” Adewolu said.
The NCC Executive Commissioner also explained that though NCC was a regulatory agency, it had seen the need for indigenous digital skills development in Nigeria, and that explained the creation of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), by the Commission to meet the human capital needs of the burgeoning telecom, and broadly, the ICT sector.
According to Adewolu, other areas of focus in meeting educational needs of the sector, include indigenous digital skills development, sponsoring of hackathon, provision of research grants to the academia, endowment of professorial chairs in universities, and the acceleration of digital infrastructure deployment across the country to boost digital literacy and skills for Nigeria’s socio-economic development.
Now, we invite you to visit the DBI website: https://www.dbi.edu.ng and review the programmes of DBI and compare with the ones outlined by Adewole for partnership with the LBS.
Avid followers of developments within the NCC and DBI will agree that there is a seeming erosion of mandate of the DBI and or an absence of strategic communication of same based on statements emanating from the leaderships of the DBI and the NCC. This ‘disharmony’ should not happen between the Commission and its subsidiary. The Commission cannot be seen to be wittingly or unwittingly watering down the mandate of its subsidiary; it should rather do all it takes to promote its evolution organically. It can do this by pushing for increasing investment in the institute to bolster its true status and stature as its capacity-building subsidiary.
DBI cannot afford to suffer ‘vision crises’ or ‘mandate crises’ or, indeed, any crises, or have conflict of mandate with a consultant, whatsoever, by virtue of its affiliation with the foremost telecommunications regulatory authority in Africa, that the NCC represents. The sense we get is that ‘the current mandate crises” challenging DBI are not humongous and could easily be resolved with a Retreat. Call it Mandate Clarification Retreat or any other name, where a phased interaction beginning first with the Boards, continuing with Managements and terminating with the Staff of the NCC and DBI, is held,(that is where collocating these within a larger platform is difficult or impossible) with the aim of ensuring that all ambiguities real or imagined, regarding the mandate of the DBI are resolved, for the overall interest of its stakeholders and the larger economy.
Put succinctly, DBI needs to have good vibes(adlib) from the top to enable its successive leaderships do what they ought to do. Period! Or as the Italians are wont to say: Basta!
There are many advantages that will accrue to the NCC and DBI if the latter’s mandate is reaffirmed and reinstated. The managers of DBI will operate at a raised morale that conduces to optimal productivity. It will also remove all traces of fear of ‘micromanagement’ from the top thus allowing the best come out from the DBI Board, Management and Staff. Within the larger NCC family, reaffirming and reinstating the mandate of DBI will reduce prospects of unwieldy maintenance challenge and increase the efficiency of compact operations while retaining functional…specificity. Above all, reaffirming and reinstating DBI’s mandate will ultimately lead to reduced capital expenditure( capex) and operational expenditure(opex) than would have been the case under an outsourced regime.
There is no better gift to present to DBI than the reaffirmation and restoration of its original mandate as it readies for its 20 years celebration as the nation’s foremost digital capacity-building institution, come May 2024. ##
