Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Dambatta, says the N500 million NCC Special Social Intervention Fund is yet to be accessed by public schools in the country.
Dambatta said this on Tuesday in Kano at the opening of a 2-day Kano Social Influencers’ Summit organised by the Centre of Information Technology and Development.
According to him, the fund is set up to provide infrastructure in public schools as part of the commission’s corporate social responsibility.
“May be many state governments are not aware of this special intervention fund in the NCC.
“So I am going to make this information available at the disposal of those who are listening to this programme that NCC has social intervention fund for 2019.
“This is in addition to interventions we have been making in all spheres of human endeavours, especially in the Universities, Polytechnics, government colleges and secondary schools.
“But this one is a special intervention fund that is dedicated to renovating schools, providing schools with furniture, provision of borehole in institutions without one and so on,” he said.
The NCC boss added: ” we have defined the criteria among which we assess and verify if the intervention is really needed.
“Application can be made specifying what the beneficiary institution or entity is interested in.
“And we will go and take a look, assess and evaluate if that intervention is critical to the progress and development of the particular entity that is making the request.”
On social media, Dambatta explained that the NCC is not responsible for regulating social media content and absolved it of blame over inciting contents on various social media platforms.
“NCC does not regulate the content. NCC does not regulate technology and applications such as Over The Top (OTTs).
“Anytime you hear people talking about OTTs, what always come to your mind is Whatsapp, Google hangs out, Facebook, Wechat, Skype.
“We don’t regulate these; though there are some arguments that these services should be regulated by NCC, but all over the world there are very few countries that regulate OTTs because of the social impacts they have on citizens,” he added.
