THE mobile telephone revolution, which started in Nigeria about 13 years ago, and has subsequently gained huge momentum, may have placed the country seventh among the first 20 in the global list of countries with huge mobile phone penetration.
This information was contained in a paper delivered in Lagos, on Monday, by the immediate past Director- General of the National Information and Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Prof. Cleopas Angaye.
Indeed, Nigeria, which according to the World Bank has about 170 million populations, currently has 168.5 million connected lines, from about 400, 000 Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) lines about 13 years ago. However, out of the 168.5 million lines, about 127 million are active, which spread across three different technology platforms of GSM, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and fixed wired/wireless technologies.
Interestingly, Nigeria’s teledensity, number of telephone users per an inhabitat, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is firm at 90 per cent. The world’s population is currently put at 6.8 billion.
Angaye, who spoke on “Untapped benefits of the Internet by the Nigerian youth” at the 2014 Nigeria Internet Governance Forum” organised by the Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NiRA) with the theme: “Harnessing Multi-stakeholders Framework for Internet Governance and Economic Growth”, noted that youths can develop applications and programmes for the mobile ecosystem, which he said is booming and yet to reach the a saturation level.
The former NITDA DG, apparently relying on data from 2014 social networking statistics, listed China, which has 1,227, 360, 000 as the number one country; followed by India with 904, 510,000 and in third position is the United States of America with 327, 577, 529 mobile phones use.
2014 World Cup host, Brazil is fourth with 273, 583,000. Russia and Indonesia ranked fifth and sixth with 256, 116, 000 and 236, 800, 000 respectively.
Nigeria is ranked seventh with 167, 371, 945 mobile phone usage. Pakistan follows Nigeria with 138, 000, 000 while Japan is ninth with 121, 246,700 phone usage.
Furthermore, the statistics put Bangladesh in the tenth position with 114, 808, 000 while United Kingdom ranked 16th globally with 75, 750, 000 mobile phone.
The Other African country on the list, Egypt ranked 19 with 92, 640,000, while Thailand in the 20th position has 69, 000, 000 mobile phones.
Still from the document, Egypt has 13, 010, 580 Facebook users, followed by South Africa, which has 5, 534, 160 and Nigeria is third with 5,375, 500. Morocco is fourth with 5,250, 340 Facebook users and Algeria is fifth with 4, 322, 120 users.
While calling for safer Internet ecosystem in Nigeria, Angaye urged the Nigerian youths to focus on developing applications that will aid development. According to him, applications are needed for games, social networking, utilities, weather, GPS tracking solutions, device manufacturer, mobile WEB, M2M technologies, mobile retailers among others.
Like the minister of Communications, Dr. (Mrs) Omobola Johnson, who said the Federal government will ensure enhanced security of the cyberspace for Internet users, Angaye said for ubiquitous Internet penetration, there is need for adequate and inteoperable national or regional legal frameworks; secure software and ICT-based applications; appropriate national and global organizational structures todeal with cyber incidents; more information security professionals and skills within governments; lack of basic awareness among users and more international cooperation between industry experts, law enforcements, regulators, academia and international organisations among others to address a global challenge.
Meanwhile, the minister, at Nigeria DigitalSense Africa forum, organized by Digital Sense Africa with the theme: ‘Internet Governance for Development on enhanced Internet security’ said recent statistics showed that the number of Internet users in the country was fast rising, and noted that there had been more calls to protect these Internet users.
According to Johnson, represented by the Assistant Director, e-Governance Department at the ministry, Olufeko Olufemi,“more than 55 million people currently hook up to the Internet daily and if we do not step up the game to protect them from being victims of fraud and other challenges, the situation could get worse when the number of Internet users rises further.”
She further said there were various ongoing initiatives both by the private and the public sectors, “all of which are geared towards enhancing security of the country’s cyber space.”
“Efforts are currently being made in collaboration with the lawmakers towards ensuring an Internet ecosystem that makes people legally responsible for any acts committed on the web.”