NCC, LBS Mull Collaboration on Capacity Building

Emma Okonji

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Lagos Business School of Pan-Atlantic University are considering forging a partnership that will result in developing customised capacity building interventions and overhauling of existing training courses offered by the LBS to address critical areas of needs of the Commission’s human capital development.

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, emphasised the imperative of such collaboration during a visit of LBS delegation led by the School’s Director, Executive Education, Victor Banji, to the Commission’s head office in Abuja recently.

The EVC spoke through NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management, Adeleke Adewolu, who received the LBS delegation alongside other senior management staff of the Commission, on behalf of the EVC.

Addressing the visiting team, Adewolu said NCC constantly engages in staff training as part its strategy to build managerial and technical skills required to manage the ever-dynamic telecoms regulatory environment in Nigeria.

Adewolu said while LBS has been a training partner of NCC over the years and currently provides some classes of capacity building to staff of the Commission, it has become necessary to expand the training scope by ensuring that other customised programmes that target specific needs of Commission’s human capital are designed by the School in collaboration with NCC’s team to meet strategic objectives and enhance the relationship of the two organisations. 

Among the areas of interest to the Commission are courses on performance appraisal management, policy formulation and execution, risk management, technical report writing, telecoms-related training, tariff and competition management, as well as basic training on policy formulation and implementation, social media training, audio-visual editing, among others.

“I thank the LBS for its collaboration with NCC over the years in the area of human capital development. However, we expect that LBS will work with NCC to see how we can collectively overhaul the existing courses and bring new course to NCC’s attention which we would, in turn, subject to our training need analysis (TNA). This may result in a review of ur existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) towards making our relationship much stronger and more mutually beneficial,” Adewolu said.

He also explained that though NCC is a regulatory agency, it has seen the need for indigenous digital skills development in Nigeria, which explained the creation of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), by the Commission to meet the human capital needs of the burgeoning telecoms, and broadly, the ICT sector.

Speaking on the purpose of the visit to the Commission, Banji said: “The business school wishes to serve as a strategic capacity development partner to NCC for its teaming staff; revisit LBS’s existing MoU for necessary enhancements, as well as offer corporate governance, board leadership and management development programmes to enhance corporate effectiveness.”