The National Assembly has scheduled the public hearing for the “controversial” National Information Technology Development Agent (NITDA) Act Amendment Bill for today, Friday, in what has been characterized as something of an ambush for the sector.
The change occurred as a result of a public announcement made by the NASS Joint Committee on ICT and Cyber Security yesterday, which gave stakeholders only a day’s notice that they should be present for the event, which was supposed to start at 9:00 a.m. today.
The timing was also deemed inappropriate as the NASS began its recess as of today (Friday), and it will resume its official duties on December 28, 2022. Nevertheless, the notice was deemed insufficient for necessary stakeholders, including representatives of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), the business community, and the general public, to make meaningful preparations to make inputs on the proposed Bill.
The Clerk to the Senate Committee on ICT and Cyber Security, Ayoh Ogon, and the Clerk, House Committee on ICT, jointly signed a public notice by the Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives in ICT and Cyber Security inviting stakeholders and members of the general public to the one-day public hearing to discuss the NITDA Amendment Bill 2021.
The public hearing will focus on “A bill for an Act to Repeal the National Information Technology Development Agency Act No. 28, 2007 and enact the NITDA Act to provide for the Administration, Implementation, and Regulation of Information Technology Systems and Practices, as well as the Digital Economy in Nigeria, and for Related Matters, 2022,” according to the official announcement.
However, it was learned that following the publication of the 24-hour public notice yesterday, stakeholders from MDAs of the Federal and State governments, the entire business community, particularly those involved in the ICT/telecoms sector, as well as the general public, expressed “grave concerns” regarding the justification for the brief public notice for an important assignment centered on a bill, whose provisions have become the subject of controversies due to overlapping provisos.
The National Assembly’s 24-hour public notice to convene the republic hearing on the bill being promoted by NITDA, the organization founded in 2007 to oversee the creation and implementation of Information Technology Policies across
“The public notice was published in some newspapers today, inviting stakeholders to attend a public hearing slated for Friday, December 23, 2022 at the Senate Building, National Assembly Abuja by 9:00 a.m. We feel this is an ambush as the time is very short and also it is fixed at a time when the NASS would have been on recess,” a senior and concerned stakeholder in one of the federal MDAs told The Guardian on phone yesterday on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to comment on the issue.
Despite having plans to attend the hearing, a representative of a significant ICT industry association described the action as a strategy to guarantee that NITDA eventually usurps authority from other governmental agencies.
“I will recommend that NITDA not stray from capacity building, for which it has a reputation and which it marshals extremely effectively. Future catastrophe could result from a detour into seeking a regulatory power that unintentionally infringes on the authority of some existing authorities.
Kehinde Aluko, a telecoms expert, is concerned about the timing of the event because “it falls on the eve of Christmas and New Year, when most stakeholders, who could have attended, would have traveled for festivities, excluding them from participating to air their views to address grey areas of overlapping or usurpation of other agencies’ statutory powers and authorities.”
The public hearing was unknown to the potential organizations that The Guardian contacted, especially those in the ICT ecosystem who would typically be expected to attend. Among others, the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), the Computer and Allied Products Dealers Association of Nigeria (CAPDAN), and the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS) are unaware.
The Computer Professionals (Registration Council of Nigeria) (CPN), one of the industry organisations who criticized the proposed NITDA Bill earlier in the year, rejected the NITDA Bill 2021 in its entirety.
The CPN noted in a statement signed by Muhammad Bello Aliyu, its Registrar/Secretary to Council, that the NITDA Bill 2021 “arrogates powers of several other regulatory agencies to NITDA, which is an infringement on the statutory powers of other agencies of government like CPN, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Galaxy backbone, Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the National Universities Commission (NUC), among others.”
The IT experts claimed that stakeholders present at a previous NITDA meeting in February 2022 were in agreement that several sections of the proposed NITDA Bill usurped the legal authority of other governmental entities that had existed prior to NITDA and had been carrying out their statutory duties.
“For instance, Section 6, 13, 20, 21, and 22, which talked about NITDA’s power, licensing and authorisations, offences and penalties, among others, raised some pertinent issues.
“Section 6 arrogated new powers to NITDA, which included the ability to fix licensing and authorisation charges, collect fees and penalties and issue contravention notices and non-compliance with the Act,” the body stated.
The objectionable elements of the proposed NITDA Bill, which provide NITDA the authority to carry out the duties of other agencies, should be deleted, according to CPN, which claims that all the agencies present at the stakeholders’ engagement meeting NITDA called in February 2022 agreed on this point.
Since there is still a great deal of work to be done in the nation’s information technology development, CPN stated it is firmly convinced that NITDA should keep to its function as an agency for IT development and quit looking for regulatory roles.
In a similar vein, a webinar organized by NITDA in March 2022 that brought lawyers together to examine the provisions of the NITDA Amendment Bill 2021 was also met with unexpected criticism of a number of sections, prompting them to call on the Bill’s drafters to return to the drawing board to ensure it toes a neutral path and does not arrogate the power of existing government agencies to itself, a development that could necessitate more conflict regulatory in the future.
The NITDA (Repeal and Re-Enactment) Bill 2021, which has been presented, not only aims to make the agency into a new regulatory body that will usurp the authority of its current regulators, but it also lays out a suffocating punitive system for business owners.
Olumide Apata, the President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), who was represented by Rotimi Ogunyemi, the Chairman of the NBA-ICT SBL’s Committee, raised three key concerns about the proposed Bill during the webinar in March 2022. The most important of these was how the NITDA Bill intended to navigate its way within the general context of other regulatory functions of other regulatory agencies to avoid functions overlap; and the impact of the harsh penalties for violation of certain sections of the Bill on the ICT business environment.
