 Imagine a world of internet connection at a speed faster than that of lightning. Speed 10 times faster than what is obtained in the 4th generation that is 4G network. A world of interconnectedness where the TV set, door, refrigerator, cars and other home appliances are being controlled remotely on the mobile phone. Veteran surgical operation and telemedicine being executed with clinical precision. But these are many more are the endless promises of the world of 5G network which is an advancement on the current 4G network being used largely in major cities of Nigeria. On the show today we will review their policies and implementation of the Federal Government 5G plan. Welcome to Business Insight and Floss TV Africa, I am Justin Akadone. Alright Nipost launches eDebit card, CBN's monetary policy rate among others, run it up the business week in Nigeria, take a look. The Nigerian postal services Nipost has launched its eDebit card agency banking platform in 27 cargo delivery vehicles to help improve service delivery across the country while performing the launching and Thursday in Abuja. The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Professor Issa Pantami said no economy could be transformed without digitisation, noting that this is in line with the current administration's target to achieve a digitised economy. The Lagos State Governor Babaji Desong Wulu has flagged off the construction of a Jotauk Bebi link bridge and approach roads to ease traffic in the Nigerian and Ojotau areas of the state. The legacy project whose construction is taking off 20 years after conception is expected to link Okbebi in Alenave new area with Ojotau and Maryland through Odoia Laro on the pass. So, Wulu at the flag of ceremony said that the project is strategic because after huge traffic bearing capacity of the area as it will help reduce the perennial gridlock along the Mobolaji Bank Anthony Road that leads to the Murutala Mohamed International Airport. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives resolved to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the suspicious and unclaimed funds in various accounts in commercial banks in Nigeria. The House mandated the committee to also investigate the unremitted funds collected on behalf of ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government by the banks. On Tuesday, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria has voted unanimously to retain the benchmark interest rate at 11.5% while keeping all other monetary parameters constant. This was announced by the governor of the Sibian, Godwin Emefele, while reading the communique of the first Monetary Policy Committee meeting of the year on Tuesday, 25 January 2022. Also on Tuesday, President Mamado Buhari directed all security institutions to immediately leverage 5G technology to enhance national security when deployed. Buhari spoke at the launch of the National Policy on 5G for Nigeria's digital economy, saying the federal government will take full advantage of the opportunities provided by 5G for the nation's economy, security and well-being. Well those were the stories that rounded up Business Nigeria for this week. Recently at the National Policy on 5G for Nigeria's digital economy, President Mohammad Buhari directed all the security institutions to immediately leverage the fifth generation that is the 5G technology when deployed to enhance security in the country. Joining us on the show to look at the policy implementation is the president of the private telecommunications and communications senior staff Association of Nigeria, Texan Okwemi Tomori. Many thanks for joining us on Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. Thank you. All right. There have been several wonderful things that have been said about the 5G technology, how it can enhance the way we go about doing things, the speed, the interconnectivity and of course somehow it can actually impact on business, agriculture, telemedicine. Can you tell us more about the practicality here in Nigeria? Thank you so much and it's a good thing. Thanks so much for having me here and see you also in the show documentary you just presented. There are a lot of opportunities in the 5G technology which is coming and particularly we look at what the telecom industry have been contributing to the growth of the nation, particularly the GDP which was about 30% last year. It shows perfectly that if we could make sure that we do better on this front, that is the front of telecommunication in Nigeria, then the country will actually gain a lot and they benefit seriously from focusing on these benefits. As the president rightly said, it has multiple funds like for the economy, generally it's going to benefit from that and security, health, education and so on. So for us in Nigeria, we do a lot in making sure that this technology is beyond the law. We haven't had the other discussions of telecommunication which was the last one was 4G and you can see that it gave Nigeria a very great leap in the field of having connectivity and the way we do business, transaction in Nigeria has gotten better after that. All right, I really need to understand why it is important to Nigeria, specifically knowing that we took a while before we get into the 4G technology platform, but right now would you really say that as a country, we are indeed ready for this particular technology? Yes, that is because 5G addresses limitations which we will find in the other technologies, including 4G itself. That is, we have greater capacity in the fact that there are other frequencies which previously would not be able to harness, like the Minuita wave, which has not been harness previously. For the 5G, we would be able to use that for this technology. So in these particular frequencies which we mentioned, we have about 30 gigahertz to about 300 gigahertz of the frequency, we will be able to have more capacity and when you have more capacity, then you can actually handle the number of people that will be connecting on the network. Everyone will have much more and better quality of connection. It will also flow and follow the part of the National Broadband Plan of Nigeria. In the sense that we would be moving towards having cheaper data, data is going to get cheaper and according to the plan, we are expecting that we should fall below 400 naira per every giga bit of data which people will be getting. That is very interesting. So we will be moving towards that very fast. All right, it sounds all wonderful, very wonderful to the country now, but then are there any immediate challenges that we need to overcome to get into this wonderful world of technology? A lot of people over time will complain about the issues of erratic and power supply. Forex, right of way, are these issues that really need to come back? Definitely the challenges will always be there and the benefits will definitely push us all, including the governments, to make sure that we get all those challenges out of the way, to make sure these happen. For 5G, as you rightly said, it writes better on the fiber connectivity which for Nigeria will still need to be tackled, but it doesn't matter. The only thing is that we would be able to do this graphically and make sure that it goes. For us as a union, our immediate concern in these aspects is to make sure that Nigeria truly localizes 5G, that is the local competence is a very great area which we should look at. We shouldn't make 5G a kind of imported technology, that is we should try to own it in Nigeria, try to train and make sure that the resources we have already on the telecoms front in Nigeria are well and adequately trained to be able to run these rocks, because there are a lot of things that need to be considered on the 5G technology. Most of the opportunities that opens up and the rate at which we will go the line of data, communications will focus more and most people will go more on the data line and businesses will transform a lot to remote. So it means that we need to gain competence and make sure that we really own it and no one does it better than the people in the country. So for us as a union, we'll be focusing on that aspect to make sure that this is well incorporated in the government policy. All right. All right, let me just hold that thought, we'll come and discuss more after this quick break. There is still a business insight on plus TV Africa and indeed we're still looking at 5G technology in Nigeria, the policies and of course the implementation in the moment for more, don't go away. All right, welcome back, there's still a business insight and plus TV Africa and we're looking at the wonderful world of the 5G technology in Nigeria. How far we need to go and what we need to put in place so that we can have a seamless connectivity and all of that. We still have the president of Texan, that is, thank you. Thank you. All right, fine. Let us talk about the process involved during the spectrum and auction and everything and two winners, that's MTN and MAFAB. But right now, do you really think that for those two players that we can actually get the technology that we actually deserve here in Nigeria? Yes, I believe so and definitely it is a gradual process and right now, I think it is the 3.5G that has just been auctioned. So there are still demands which should be available for other players to come in and I believe that CC will gradually move towards those costs as well. As I said, there is still the opportunity to use the existing bands which have been licensed for the other technologies, the 4G, the 3G previously. This also could be honest and used on 5G. For Roche right now, I believe it's a good thing that the giant telecommunications company MTN has won this license and we believe that they have more than what it takes to deliver this. And for us, we will try to make sure that for our people, we will be supporting this as much as we can and the focus also on the resource development, the level of competence of the people working on this will definitely have to increase. So yes, I believe so much that these two will be able to at least kick it off in the nation. All right, fine. There are expectations of these two licenses as it were. For more we have between the 4th and the 2nd year of the license, the operators are expected to roll out of service in at least one state in each geopolitical zone. How feasible do you see that? Absolutely doable. Because right now, as you know, 5G technology came in over the last three years. So it has been developing gradually and there are opportunities which could be honest. That is 5G could be made to ride on the existing 4G. That is if even if there are challenges for 5G to stand alone on its own, there are opportunities which you can put it on the existing 4G. So this will leveraging on that to make the deployment of 5G something a little bit easier for them to do. So within that space of that period given, yes, it is doable. All right, so let's talk about entrepreneurs. How can they really key into the huge potentials of 5G? That's on the one hand. And secondly, for the average consumer, would they really need to change their seems like what happened with the 4Gs? Okay, yes, on that one, even including the mobile answers, most of them right now do not have the 5G capability. So definitely when 5G comes, yes, we need to do that. But we need to understand what 5G covers really. That is one of the use cases of 5G technology. That is the mobile communication which we do, you and I do with our answer and so on. So both there are others and many other aspects of it where devices will definitely have to come in together with this deployment. And when those devices come, you come to talk about sensors which aid the IoT, the internet of things, a lot of things will need to be connected and as such we respect to see a lot of other devices coming in with that technology. All right, let's move away from mobile technology specifically now and talk about other ways that you can impact on business. For instance, if I were into agriculture or maybe involved in other business, how can I bring to bear the operations of 5G? Let's see if I'm not having to just connect from my phone, really. Yes, okay. It starts from, as I said, there will be connectivity for so many things and then including, for example, someone in the agriculture sector who has a lot of animals on his farm and would like to monitor, for example, where you can talk about 500 heads of cattle. In order to be able to monitor them, each one of them could actually be attached with a particular device and you would be able to monitor location, the health status of those animals and depending on the kind of data you would like to collect. Then easily it would be, I mean, it would get easier to be able to manage a very big flop of, I mean, animals on farms. That is one of the uses and when it also connects to security, even if those animals get missing, so on them and so on, it would be easy to track locations. So it helps also in collecting the enough data from plants and sending it to a central location. We will use data to actually be analyzed and then get a better condition and then development for plants on the field. Okay, finally, let's talk about texts and now, you know, in all of this, now what's your involvement and how exactly or what exactly are you going to do to ensure that, you know, your members and of course Nigerians generally, you know, get to understand all of the benefits and, you know, Nigerians are better off for it. Okay, yes, as I said earlier, for our members who are working in many of these companies right now in Nigeria, particularly in MTN where we have our members also, MTN have come to be the ones to kick off, one of the companies to kick off this in Nigeria. As I said, you would need to focus on the inclusive, I mean, to make sure that we include our members in this delivery. A lot of times you find that in the beginning, we don't have the competence, we may not have those competence available in the number which is required. So we would like to see a situation where even when you import, when you bring in an expert, then we would have Nigerians attached to such experts to make sure that within a very short time, the experts will be able to go back and Nigerians will continue doing so. But if we are not very careful, we don't play this very well. Sometimes we would see this leading into making a lot of people obsolete in a kind of way or redundant. So this is what we are watching, we are watching out for very well to build at the level of competence it's in place. Well, thank you, Okbe Ami. Indeed, Nigerians are going to benefit and of course Nigerians are not just expatriates who will actually be brought to bear and the inclusiveness that you talked about will be seen to a large extent. We have been speaking with Okbe Ami Tomori, the president of TechSan, and we just explored the 5G technology, the implications and of course all of the benefits. Many times once again, Okbe Ami. Thank you, pleasure. All right, I will leave you with a report on the red line rail project acquired by the Lagos State Government, you know, that's the size of the show. I am Justin, I'll continue to return again next time. Bye for now. The acting new working mayor, Kavila Janssen, receives Governor Sawoon Luenistim to the city. The governor and his delegation inspect the interior design of the newly acquired cargo trains with a speed limit of 330 km per hour. The intracity metropolitan trains are a boost for the red line project to kick off. A train is not something you just, you know, go on the shelf and pick up, right? And so we were very, we've been pretty challenged knowing where we can get, you know, brand new trains like this. And so we're very, very lucky that our partnership and our conversations with some of our partners here started with Talgo about a month and a half ago. And because of Christmas and New Year, we couldn't, you know, close it up. But I'm so, so excited that within the, you know, the first month of the year, a very deserving one for that matter. And we've seen a beautiful white and red tree, you know, coincidentally, the real line is called a red line. It's called a red line. And so you can see they've given us the color as well. So we're just going to brand in and put our seal there. Chief Executive Officer and President, Talgo USA, Antonio Perez, warns against not putting the trains to use. He shows gratitude for the purchase. With a capacity of 500,000 passengers daily, the red line will have 11 stations. And when completed, will be the first operational metro systems in West Africa. From Lagas, Love Ikuku Uiedukun, reporting for Plus TV, Africa.