Forum to Address $2.6bn Capital Flight

A forum of experts across Nigeria’s public and private sectors is set to stem $2.6 billion spent by telecoms operators in the country in search of foreign solutions and inputs.

Tagged Policy Implementation Assisted Forum (PIAFo), the forum has been put together by Business Metrics Nigeria, a business and tech-dedicated news platform to stimulate effective implementation of the National Policy for Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Nigerian Telecommunications Sectors recently launched by President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to the conveners of the forum, scheduled to hold August 5, 2021, other stakeholders in the telecommunications industry would be led by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ibrahim Pantami, who is expected to deliver a keynote address at the forum.

While PIAFo is designed in series to bridge policy implementation gaps in the country, the forthcoming maiden edition is themed: National Policy for Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Nigerian Telecommunications Sector.

The Managing Editor of Business Metrics and Chairman, Organising Committee, PIAFo-001, Mr. Omobayo Azeez, assured that participation of stakeholders across the concerned sector had been secured to chart a way for the effective implementation of the policy, which seeks to stem $2.6 billion annual capital flights in telecoms industry by promoting alternative solutions that come with ease of doing business.

According to him, the forthcoming forum combines the criticality of the telecoms sector as an enabler of the economy and that of promotion of local contents, which is an economic catalyst to bridge the policy implementation vacuum in Nigeria.

“The general impression expressed by people on a daily basis that Nigeria is only good at policy pronouncement but often fails in implementation is about to become a thing of the past. PIAFo is dedicated to stimulating implementation and tracking progress with measurable metrics.

“We have discovered that policy execution failure that has been experienced over the years is ascribed to many factors such as poor awareness, shallow stakeholders’ engagements, lack of monitoring and poor periodic assessment to track progress.

“To change this narrative, PIAFo is equipped with strategic objectives to serve as a brainstorming platform for policy assimilation; to identify demands of government policies from individual stakeholders involved; to coordinate multi-stakeholder efforts towards achieving policy objectives; to ensure effective policy implementation and to assess implementation level of policies over time,” Azeez said.