Nigerian minister urges girls to consider ICT

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications Technology Omobola Johnson urged Nigerians yesterday to join a campaign calling on girls to join the ICT industry.Johnson made this statement in light of the upcoming “Girls In ICT Day” organised by eBusiness Life Limited where she is billed as the Special Guest of Honour.

Johnson believes girls in the ICT profession should be seen as something normal.

“’Girls in ICT Day’ should be marked until seeing girls in ICT is not a novelty or an anomaly,” Johnson said. This lends credence to the campaign theme “Why Leave ICT to boys, Girls can do ICT too”.

eBusiness Life Limited CEO Ufuoma Emuophedaro said the campaign was aimed at empowering girls to be more productive in the ICT.

The event features quizzes, essay competitions, roundtable discussions, interactive and motivational talks from renowned women ICT professionals, among others.

Nigerian internet beats New York’s

According to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, Nigeria’s internet speed is faster than New York’s.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. (image: blogspot.com)

Wales tweeted yesterday, “Broadband speed in Nigeria. Beats New York City”, with a link to the results of his speed test (see below).

Jimmy Wales

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@jimmy_wales

Broadband speed in Nigeria. Beats New York City. speedtest.net/result/1857643…

26 Mar 12

Wales arrived in Lagos yesterday and is set to address the Youth Marketer Convergence Conference (YMC 2.0) which runs from 27-28 March.

Wales later posted another tweet saying: “To clarify my earlier tweet – I know this speed is not representative of broadband across Nigeria! But it is real bandwidth and the future!” (see below).

Anonymous operating system prompts security warnings

More than 26,000 people have downloaded an operating system which members of the Anonymous hacker group claim to have created.The software is based on a version of the open-source operating system Linux and comes outfitted with lots of website sniffing and security tools.The "official" Anonymous group has distanced itself from the software.In a widely circulated tweet, AnonOps claimed the operating system was riddled with viruses.The operating system is available via the Source Forge website - a well-known repository for many custom code projects.The 1.5GB download is based on Ubuntu - one of the most popular versions of the Linux operating system. The software's creators say they put it together for "education purposes to checking the security of web pages (sic)".t asked people not to use it to destroy webpages.Soon after the operating system became available, the AnonOps account on Twitter posted a message saying it was fake and "wrapped in trojans". var 

Politicians want MTN Nigeria’s licence revoked

Nigeria’s People’s Democratic Party on Monday approached a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja aiming to compel the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to revoke MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd ‘s licence.

Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola wants MTN Nigeria to be reprimanded for their alleged unfair practices. (image: theachieverspublicationltd.co.uk)

The party’s Osun and Ekiti Chapters filed the suit, while Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former Osun State governor, alleged the NCC failed to protect them from MTN‘s unfair practices.
They allege MTN provided the council with an incomplete data after they were req
uested to provide the National Judicial Council with call logs containing alleged conversations of suspended Court of Appeal president, Justice Ayo Salami, to substantiate allegations that Justice Salami was influenced by members of the Action Congress of Nigeria to remove Oyinlola from office.
They believe MTN forwarded partial call data records to the NJC, containing only partial components, leaving the NJC no choice but to declare the call logs as lacking in evidentiary value.
“The action of MTN to deliberately frustrate the work of the NJC panel by providing inadequate and incomplete call data records constitutes gross professional and ethical misconduct,” their statement said.
They said MTN deliberately omitted the months of September, October and November 2010 from the call data record to mislead the NJC Panel, contravening the Nigerian Communications Commission Act. Finally, they also want the court to impose a N150 Billion fine for general damages.

Nigerian federal government liquidates NITEL

The Federal Government has decided to liquidate NITEL (Nigerian Telecommunications Limited), the telecommunications company in debt, after failing to sell the company in the past 11 years.

NITEL has been liquidated after struggling with debt for 11 years. (image: file)

This process was approved by the National Council on Privatisation, headed by Vice President Namadi Sambo, at a meeting on Monday after considering a report by one of its committees.
NITEL and its mobile arm M-Tel would be sold through “guided liquidation” in view of the company’s huge liabilities, the Bureau of Public Enterprises said in a statement.
“The TC recommended that ‘guided liquidation’ should be adopted as the strategy for the privatisation of NITEL/M-Tel in view of the huge liabilities of both companies and that there was no viable financial alternative presented by the management of NITEL/M-Tel,” Chukwumah Nwokoh, BPE spokesman, said.
Nwokoh said the NCP supported the recommendation of the Technical Committee that opted for ‘guided liquidation’. Despite, venues not accounting for, “the management of NITEL/M-Tel had been obtaining their salaries from the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Consequently, the NCP directed the Sub-Committee of the Technical Committee on Information, Communication, National Facilities and Agric Resources to immediately carry out investigations and ensure that all revenues received were accounted for.”
Speaking to Daily Trust, Elias Kazza, Senior Staff Association of Communications, Transport and Corporations president, said privatisation efforts on NITEL failed due to the selfish interest of some Nigerians.