The Muhammadu Buhari-led government on Thursday announced a reduction of the price of data by more than 50 per cent following a directive that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) should put in place measures to that effect.
This was made known in a statement by the Technical Assistant to the Minister of Communications and digital economy Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, Mr Femi Adeluyi.
Bibian Anekwe News reports that beginning from last November the price of data of 1GB has been reduced from 1000 naira to 487 naira.
Adeluyi said: “The Honourable Minister had inaugurated a committee that developed the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020-2025) on the 16th of December, 2019.
“The Plan was unveiled and launched by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, on the 19th of March, 2020.
“One of the goals of the Plan is to reduce the average cost of 1GB of data to a maximum of N390 by 2025.
“With the January 2020 baseline of N1,000 per GB, the maximum projected steady decrease for the end of each year was as follows: 2020 (N925), 2021 (N850), 2022 (N775), 2023 (N700), 2024 (N545) and 2025 (N390).
”In line with Dr Pantami’s commitment to under promise and over deliver, the measures have caused the current cost of data to reduce significantly beyond the December 2020 projection of N925.
“Based on the Report by NCC, the average cost of data as at November 2020 was N487.18, which amounts to 47.33% lower than the projected value.
”The Report also indicates that the cost of data in November 2020 was less than 50% of the cost of data in January 2020.”
