Nigeria’s telecommunications industry is at a critical period in the quest for development. The sector has been bedeviled with quality of service issues, some of which are within the purview of the operators and others outside their control.

Some of the factors responsible for poor quality of services include congestion of the network by operators, as a result of insufficient capacity in the network.

It was against this backdrop that Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) banned two Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) operators from running promotions geared towards increasing their subscriber base.

Besides, there are challenges of inadequate infrastructure such as power and transmission backbone.

It is unfortunate that of the said causes of the present quality of service issue nobody is looking at vital issue that account for greater percentage of poor service delivery. This is the issue of shortage of manpower.

Skilled Manpower is the trained human resources required to run a business concern. In telecommunications, this trained manpower is required mostly in running the network such as maintenance, capacity deployment among others.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that GSM operators are facing shortage of skilled manpower in the engineering aspect of their business. This is responsible largely for the high drop calls experienced by subscribers.

When network operators rolled out service some seven years ago they engaged services of foreign expertise that are running their networks, as a result of huge cost associated with keeping these expertise and need to groom local manpower believed to be cheaper network operators started replacing some of their foreign expertise with local substitutes who are not well trained to handle high end network deployment and maintenance.

Telecommunication is a technology intensive industry and enhance requires high-level skilled manpower at all stages of its deployment. This includes research, manufacture, installation, operation and maintenance. A lot of research is required both in the development of the hardware components such as integrated circuits, thin film resistors, printed circuit boards, etc and also, in the process engineering required in manufacturing such components. For examples AT & T’s Bell Laboratories in the U.S.A at its peak in the 80’s employed over 3000 professors and academicians with PhD and MSc’s to conduct research on various fields of telecommunications. Majority of them are professors on sabbatical leave from top American universities like MIT, California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), University of California at Berkeley and Standard University. The laboratory boasts of over 30,000 patients. Nigerian universities and the Academia have unique opportunity to contribute to the development of telecommunications in Nigeria through the generation of new knowledge and also producing the right type of manpower for the industry.

Also the universities and polytechnics must equip the students with the right knowledge base that can match the requirement of the industry. There will definitely be need to modify and upgrade course curriculum in electrical/electronic engineering departments.

Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, executive vice chairman, NCC had explained at one of the telecom consumer’s parliament on quality of service that there is presently a dearth of skilled manpower in the rapidly expanding telecom industry. The frequent poaching of staff among telecom operators, sometimes through offer of higher salaries, is a clear evidence of this shortage. The coming of 3G he said and the subsequent need to expand the network will further aggravate the skills shortage. Independent engineers, financial management and technical consultants have an opportunity to bridge this skill gaps. Specifically, the Nigerian Society of Engineers should encourage its members to upgrade and sharpen their skills in order to supply the required manpower for the industry.

Operators will also be seeking to outsource some specialized functions like tower design, tele-traffic studies, power systems design, spectrum clearance, civil structures, plant maintenance, type approval certification, enterprises software, among others. 3G service introductions will definitely expand the need for these services and it is an opportunity for us to further develop and consolidate the service industry in Nigeria.

In the profile of all of the companies, there are high number of foreign engineers playing major roles in operations and maintenance.

These can be traced to the fact that the companies are new and still expanding their services, as soon as exchanges, transmission and remote stations are commissioned, all that is left is daily operations and maintenance which we are close to achieving, one would expect that the foreign engineer would transfer such responsibilities to local hands.

The call therefore is for our operators to begin a gradual integration process of having local engineers with the necessary skills to take-over the operations and maintenance of the networks.

Presently, there are many engineering graduates doing things that are unrelated to their area of training in order to keep soul and body together, and there are many others who are without employment. Operators should consider a management training scheme, under which young graduates from our universities and polytechnics would be employed as trainees; for a period of two to four years, in order to understand the systems and network, such that in the next three to five years we can have fully Nigerian companies, not only in terms of registration, but also in the area of manpower.

Under such a scheme, the trainees may be co-opted into project teams as part of the network roll out, and at the end, they would have knowledge of how things work and a full knowledge of the network profile.

In this regard, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (Alton) recommended that telecommunications operators should work with universities and polytechnics, to introduce the scheme, and identify the above-average students who would like to make career in telecoms, such students can be allowed to pass their industrial training with the companies and upon graduation commence a traineeship program, during which period they can be integrated into the operations of the company.

In the area of on-the-job and function specific improvement, we now have institutions like Digital Bridge Institution, Abuja that can offer training in various areas of Information and Communications Technology.

The scheme would go a long way to our manpower demands for now and the future. We can not afford to have an industry that is heavily depended on foreign hands; the implications are too many, both on our educational system, and on level of technological development.

We must have Nigerians playing significant role in the daily operations of various telecom company and that is the only way that can guarantee a truly Nigeria industry in the future.