Victor Adoga, Manager of the National Numbering Plan for the Nigerian ommunications Commission (like USA's Federal ommunications Commission), was someone I was not expecting to meet at NXTCOMM in 2007 in Las Vegas. We discussed that day the stereotypical depiction of Nigerians as opposed to the reality of innovation, hard work, entrepreneurship, and integrity evident in many.
Victor shared with me once, "I proud and happy being a Nigerian. With the right kind of leadership, given the vast natural and human resources we have, Nigeria has the potential to be great. It is a country free of natural disasters and blessed by God but corrupt and bad leadership has being our tsunami.....laugh! but gradually and hopefully with the planned electoral reform, the fraudulent process that brought us most of this inept and corrupt leadership will forever be thrown into the abyss of history."
I told him I wanted to keep in touch with the NCC. We have. Yesterday, I called Victor (Nov. 24, 2009) and asked about NCC's latest projects. He agreed to let me interview him for DIDX podcast channel.
We made this call from my cell phone to Victor's and so the call quality is a bit inferior, but the content is exciting, thought-provoking, and paradigm-shifting.
Listen to him here about telecommunications QoS, bringing together service providers with consumers for realtime solutions, something like "Court TV" for solving issues and educating Nigerian citizen consumers of their rights, and also converged communications plans such as possibly combining the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission with the Nigerian Communications Commission.
There are over 17 million mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria as of 2009. There is a recent explosion of GSM and CDMA operators. The Nigerian Communications Commission is intent on educating its consumers of their rights in regards to telecommunications services and seeing a better future.
Visit http://www.ncc.gov.ng for more information.