FG Slashes Data Price By 50%, See Breakdown

Data price has been slashed by 50% by the FG.

NewsOne Nigeria reports that the Federal government led by President Muhammadu Buhari says data price has been reduced by more than 50 percent following a directive that the Nigerian Communications commission (NCC), should put in place measures to that effect.

This online news platform understands Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami disclosed this in a statement issued by his  Technical Assistant, Femi Adeluyi in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital on Thursday, December 10.

According to the statement, the new data price shows that 1GB has been reduced from 1000 naira to 487 naira beginning from last November.

Pantami said the development was in line with the directive he gave to the regulatory agency (NCC) to put measures in place to reduce the average cost of data in the country.

Read the statement on data price below…

The statement reads as thus; “The average cost of 1GB of data has reduced from the January 2020 cost of N1,000 to N487.18 in November, 2020.

“This was based on a report by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) submitted to the Honourable Minister following the implementation of the directives.”

The Technical Assistant, Information and Technology to the Minister added that: “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,” the statement on data price added.