Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani cried out to the National Assembly for help, lamenting that persistent poor funding of the ministry was frustrating his service delivery, stressing that the chronic financial constraints have stifled its ability to meet its mandate effectively.
According to the minister’s note, the ministry has struggled to achieve its goals with the current funding structure, often relying on external sources to supplement its operations, adding that Key activities, such as international engagements to secure opportunities for the sector, have largely been financed through non-governmental means due to insufficient allocations.
Speaking yesterday in Abuja while defending the ministry’s budget before the Joint Committee on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Cybersecurity chaired by Senator Shuaib Afolabi Salisu, APC, Ogun Central and Rep. Adedeji Stanley Olajide (PDP, Oyo), Tijani said, “This is a ministry that is extremely underfunded, and this is our collective responsibility, not just as a ministry, but also as a committee responsible for oversight of the work that we do.
“This ministry is unable to deliver its mandate if we continue to fund it in the way it is funded. To achieve what we’ve achieved so far, we’ve had to look for money outside of the government to get work done. A lot of the international trips that we’ve made to secure opportunities for this sector and the nation were funded from outside of government funds. We must emphasise the fact that this is a ministry that is poorly funded.
“So the budget we’re about to discuss today is not a significant worth of the time of all of us in this room, because these budgets cannot deliver on the mandate that we should be working for our nation.”
Reviewing the 2024 budget performance, he revealed that only ₦1.2 billion of the ₦2.9 billion capital budget had been released, representing a mere 39% of the total allocation, explaining that this shortfall had significantly hampered the ministry’s ability to implement its plans.
The Minister said, “Capital budget release was N2.9bn and as you can see, the amount released till date is less than half of this budget, which came to 1.2bn which has been fully spent, thus representing 39% of the total budget. “
Despite the challenges, Tijani reaffirmed the ministry’s commitment to contributing to the country’s economic growth. He aligned the ministry’s efforts with the government’s GDP growth targets of 4.6% in 2025, 4.4% in 2026, and 5.5% in 2027. However, he stressed that these targets would remain unattainable without adequate investment in the ICT sector.
“However, if you look at the appropriation bill, you will find that one of the things that we’ve done is travelling all over the world and engaging with the World Bank is to believe that we should create opportunities for our sector, that we must create opportunities for stakeholders in this sector by ensuring that Nigeria can significantly invest in the strong backbone to drive the growth that we need to see.”
Drawing from a World Bank report, the Minister pointed out that improving connectivity quality by 10% could result in a 2.5% increase in GDP growth. He emphasized that the ICT sector holds the potential to surpass the government’s growth targets if properly funded, said, “If you look at the numbers from the World Bank, they say if you can improve the quality of connectivity by 10%, you will be having about a 2.5% growth rate in the economy.
“There’s no other significant investment that is known today in any country that can lead to 2.5% increase which means if you take the current growth rate of our GDP, if our sector can contribute 2.5% to the GDP of Nigeria, Nigeria will be doing much more than 4.6% that we’re talking about today because this sector is extremely critical and this is why we’ve made very spirited arguments to fund us.”
Tijani also attributed the recent 50% increase in telecommunications tariffs to global inflation and rising operational costs, adding that the decision aligns with broader economic patterns, where tariffs can lead to higher consumer prices due to the added costs on imported goods.
Speaking to journalists moments after defending his Ministry’s budget of N12 billion for 2025 Tijani stated that 50% adjustment aligns with broader economic trends, just as he said that historically, tariffs act as a sales tax, causing a one-off price increase rather than sustained inflation.
He further explained that the Federal Government is planning to invest six billion naira to deploy ninety thousand kilometres of fibre optic cable, expanding the country’s capacity from 35,000 kilometres to 125,000 kilometers. This according to him is an initiative aimed at fostering growth in critical communication sectors.
Earlier during the budget defence session, the Chairman of the Joint Committee on ICT, Shuaib Afolabi, underscored the critical importance of the ICT sector to Nigeria’s economy, even as he emphasized that ICT was not just a standalone sector, but an enabler for other key areas, including education, health, and agriculture.
The Chairman who highlighted the need to maximise the sector’s potential, pointing out inefficiencies in the implementation of ICT projects across ministries and agencies, raised concerns about the lack of coordination in ICT initiatives, which he noted has led to suboptimal outcomes despite significant investments.
He said, “We want to take good advantage of the potential of ICT. In the last few days, we have seen ministries and agencies come here with ICT projects. People doing ICT projects that are not coordinated, leading to investments that did not give us the optimal result as a country. This is the time to harmonise some of these silos and initiatives that are being carried out.
“How do we explain the situation where in a particular ministerial and its agency, you have a digital library project at the ministry headquarters and you have a digital library project in one of the agencies, what happens if we harmonise.