President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu, has said that the body will task all presidential aspirants for the 2011 general elections on their plans and agenda for Information Communication Technology in Nigeria.

 Omo-Ottu, who said this in his remarks at the IT Assembly in Abuja, on Friday, also encouraged all other ICT bodies in the country to ensure that only politicians who were ready and willing to use ICT had the opportunity to lead the country.

 He noted that the reliance on mobile technology in the country could not be ignored, adding that it also offered huge businesses waiting Nigerian IT professionals to leverage on.

 While urging them to look into the content creation aspect of mobile technology which was currently imported into the country, Omo-Ettu noted that good political leadership was required to enable Nigerian IT professionals to make use of the advantages.

 He said, “I want Nigerian IT practitioners to know that their own aspect of the business is mainly in content creation which, for now, is only imported, if it exists at all in our own industry. My position is that opportunity cannot be more than this.

 ”Good political leadership is one of those things that will take us there and professionals in all their groupings can bring this about by making sure it is only the politicians who are ready and willing to use ICT that have the right to lead us, come 2011.

 ”We in ATCON will invite the presidential candidates of all the political parties for the 2011 elections to address our members on what plans they have for ICT, while I admonish all other professional associations at all levels to also engage the politicians at various levels on what they have in stock for their own professions and trades too. With that, we shall put politicians on the spot and prepare them for accountability in all aspects of their responsibility even before they transform into ‘excellencies’ and ‘honourables’.

 “To me, while politicians are campaigning to catch our votes, we too shall be campaigning to stop the unsuitable ones among them from coming into office, since such minds can only take us back, not forward.

 ”ATCON recently admitted that there was stress and distress in the telecoms industry, belying the popular but false belief that telecommunication firms are making excessive profit.

 According to him, it is the false belief that made everybody, including state and local governments to impose frivolous, unfair and sometimes illegal taxes on telecommunication firms.

 Experts have also said the CDMA operators in the industry have been walking on tight ropes with their poor performances. The year 2009, according to them, was particularly turbulent for the telecoms industry due to the global economic meltdown but the CDMA service providers recorded huge losses.

 ZOOMmobile has been at the bottom of the CDMA market revenue table, while Visafone reportedly recorded losses in 2009, but refused to make it public. Starcomms recorded N666m operating loss in 2009, while Multilinks‘ loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation almost tripled to $88m in the 12 months ended last March.