After months of speculation on whether or not Dr. Eugene Juwah, erstwhile Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, (NCC), will secure a second five-year term, President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Prof. Umaru Garba Danbatta to replace Juwah. The appointment comes exactly seven days after Dr. Juwah’s only term expired on July 28.
The new Executive Vice Chairman, a seasoned academic and technocrat, has gathered great and valuable experience in both the academic and professional divide of Electronics, Telecommunications as well as Information and Communications Technology (ICT) engineering.
Prof. Danbatta, holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Engineering and Telecommunications from Technical University of Wroclaw in Poland and a Doctorate Degree in the same field from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, United Kingdom.
Prof. Danbattta served as a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Technology of Bayero University Kano for 28 years, where he taught courses in telecommunication engineering and electronics and held academic positions of Dean of the Faculty and Head of Department at different times.
His main administrative responsibilities in the university included Deputy and Acting Dean of Students’ Affairs, Administrator of the Works Department and later, Director of the Centre for Information Technology (CIT).
In administrative and other responsibilities outside the university, he has served as chairman or member to over 20 committees, prominent among which was the Chairmanship of the Implementation Committee of Kano State University of Science & Technology and subsequently became its pioneer Deputy and Acting Vice-Chancellor when it took off in 2001.
Prof. Danbatta as an erudite scholar has supervised more than 60 PhD, MEng and BEng projects in the diverse areas of telecommunications and has also served as external examiner to seven universities and polytechnics and is an assessor, technical reviewer and editorial member to eight research journals.
He is a recipient of 18 distinguished awards and certificates of honour. Prof. Danbatta, who has had the honour of serving two terms of five years as a Council Member of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), is also a COREN registered engineer and member of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE).
Prof. Danbattaa is an author of books related to the study of telecommunications engineering and has to his credit more than 50 articles in journals, conference proceedings and technical reports.
In recent times, Prof. Danbatta was made the Vice President of the Digital Bridge Institute, Kano, an academy established by the NCC as an International Centre for Advanced Communications Studies in 2004 to build capacity for the Nigerian/African telecom industry in the diverse areas of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
His appointment as Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC is for five years in the first instance.
The former EVC of the NCC was reported to have over “30 years of experience in the Information Technology and Telecommunications industries, with over twenty years at the highest management levels” when he was appointed.
Juwah’s tenure experienced a mix bag of successes and challenges. While mobile subscriptions continued their steady rise, the telecom sector continued to experience an endless poor quality blamed on lack of infrastructure to support rapid expansions. In the midst of all that, mobile operators were often fined for poor quality of service or failure to adhere to rules. On the other hand, some of the operators blamed the NCC leadership for not coming hard on some of their competitors who either flout the regulator’s directives or the regulator looked the other way, all these they blamed Juwah for failing to act.
Dr. Juwah, who was very hopeful of securing a second tenure, had played coordinating roles in the setting up of ETACS, GSM and CDMA mobile networks in Nigeria, with hands on knowledge of the specification and construction of digital exchanges, base stations, data communications and subscriber access networks. As an experienced Network Operations Manager, Dr. Juwah has deep and profound practical knowledge of regulatory issues, pricing, billing, interconnection and network fraud control within the Nigerian environment.
With PhD from University of Manchester, United Kingdom (PhD) and MSc from the Technical University, Veszprem, Hungary, Dr. Juwah, started his career as a young graduate at Shell BP Petroleum company in 1976 where he was employed as a computer systems programmer working on applications in the Commercial Information Systems section. He resigned from Shell in 1978 to pursue a Doctorate Degree Programme in the United Kingdom. Returning to Nigeria in 1981, he took up employment within the Leventis Group of Companies as Computer Systems Analyst. His flair for multidisciplinary functions led to him being promoted Sales Manager (Computer Systems) in 1984, and by 1986 he had joined the ranks of General Management as Marketing Manager. Dr. Juwah was promoted Divisional General Manager in 1988.
In 1993, Dr. Juwah was invited to join the Management of a ground breaking Mobile Telephony venture, Mobile Telecommunications Services Limited, as Director (Cellular Operations) and participated in the team that erected and tested the first privately owned mobile network in Africa.
Thereafter, Dr. Juwah held top management positions at Communication Investment Limited (CIL), where he was responsible for providing the foundational technical specifications and design for the mobile operator that is today known as Globacom.
In 1999, he was again invited to join the management of MTS First Wireless Limited as Executive Director (Network & Operations), a position he held until 2005 when he resigned to start his own venture, Cititel Networks Communications Limited, a wireless infrastructure and services provision enterprise that excelled in the design of mobile cashless payment solutions for the unbanked.
Dr. Juwah, from Delta State, a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers, was nominated Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission by former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, on July 22, 2010 and confirmed by the Nigerian Senate on July 29, 2010.