By; Mohammed Kawu, Bauchi
Digital hub worth N26 million was weekend handed-over to Jama’are Community in Bauchi state by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in it’s technology inclusive drive to over 27 million Nigerians across the country into internet accessibility
To this end, the CITAD Executive Director, Dr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u disclosed that the centre has mapped out plan to establish twenty (20) Digital Community Hubs (DCHs) across the country in efforts to ensure that the 27.1m living in areas where there is no internet service benefitted from the programme.
Dr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u spoke at the handing over of Hello World Digital Hub to Jama’are community in Jama’are LGA of the state, where he also noted with dismay that millions of people in Nigeria were left behind digitally.
Ya’u quoted statistics from the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) which indicated that there are 27.1 million Nigerians who are living in areas where there is no access to Internet service
Dr. Yunusa Ya’u explained however that internet is a right and necessary digital facility, hence his centre resolved of making sure that internet is not only available but also affordable to the people, saying “That’s why we just establish this community hub where citizens of this community will come and access Internet freely for a certain period of time”.
Director Yunusa Ya’u who stated that Jama’are hello World is the second hub after the one in Abuja, also revealed that the plan by the centre is to between now and December this year establish 20 of the hubs across different parts of the country.
“The cost implications of the Jamare hub is that we bought the laptops, equipment, pay for the internet for full one year, but community also contributed with some resources in terms of erecting the structure, buying cement and blocks and so forth, but for the individual, he or she has nothing to pay as regard handset or computer or data for the one year period”.
He explained that there are four organizations that worked on the Jama’are hub that included Hello World which is a global organization that has been building hubs across the world, not only in Nigeria that conceptualised itself as a model to be identified with a particular dome
Yau stated that it was Hello World that designed the dome – 48 percent and made contribution in terms of some equipment that included solar and network, while the association for progressive communication (APC) has been a long standing partner of CITAD.
“As a matter of fact, APC is a coalition of mainly Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which CITAD is actually a member of APC. So, when we say APC actually it is CITAD there”.
He further explained that Jama’are community will use the facility in accordance with the rules set out by the committee saddled with the responsibility to manage the hub which is billed to accommodate 200 users at same time.
“The committee will responsible for allotting time, may be women will come at this time, school children would use the facility at so time, and so forth, and so forth, as being manage by the committee which comprised of people with proven integrity”.
According to him, the USPF has done research and mapped out what it called unserved and under-served communities and came out with a count of 96 clusters of communities across the country where they would have access to internet.
Also speaking at the occasion, the national coordinator, community national network CITAD Project, Haruna Adamu Hadejia however cried out the raging inflationary trend in the country which the project is experiencing in terms of establishing the proposed 20 hubs in Nigeria.
Hadejia said, “So we experiences these type of differentials in terms of costings. Just last two months, we are in Abuja where we built the first hub and the money that we spent there, I don’t want sai it double now, but it trace like 1.89 percent out of two percent now, so you can see how the market is misbehaving”.
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