By Ahmed Ahmed
The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has established an N2anm Hello World Hub for the Jammare community in the Jammare local government area of Bauchi State.
Our correspondent reports that Hello World hubs are connecting hard-to-reach communities to the Internet, digital education and building.
The Executive Director of CITAD, Mr Yunusa Zakari Yau Sa’id stated this while handing over the Hello World Digital Hub to the community in Jama’are recently.
He noted that the statistics from the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) indicate that there are 27.1 million Nigerians who are living in areas where there is no access to Internet service”.
According to him, the USPF has done research and mapped out what it called unserved and under-served communities and came out with a count of 96 clusters of communities across the country where they would have internet access, as he put the Jama’are Hub cost implication to N26 million.
Yau however explained that the internet is a right and necessary thing for every citizen to have, saying “So we are making efforts to make sure that the internet is not only available, but also affordable to people”.
He added, “That’s why we just established this community hub where citizens of this community will come and access the Internet freely. CITAD is championing the activities in Nigeria, not only in Bauchi state.
Ya’u who disclosed that the Jama’are is the second hub after the one in Abuja, also revealed that between now and December this year there would be 20 of the hubs across different parts of the country.
“The cost implications of the Jamare hub are that we bought the laptops, and equipment, and paid for the internet for a full year, but the community also contributed with some resources in terms of erecting the structure.
Buying cement and blocks and so forth, but for the individual, he or she has nothing to pay as regards handset or computer or data for the allotted period”.
He explained that four organizations worked on the Jama’arsa hub including Hello World which is a global organization that has been building hubs across the world, not not in Nigeria that conceptualized itself as a model to be identified as a done
You said that it was Hello World that designed the dome – 48 per cent and made contributions in terms of some equipment that included solar and network, while the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) has been a long-standing partner of CITAD.
APC is a coalition of mainly Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of which CITAD is a member of APC. So, when we say APC is CITAD there”.
He further explained that the Jama’are community will use the facility according to the rules set out by the committee saddled with the responsibility of managing the hub which is billed to accommodate 200 users at the same time.
A stakeholders Assistant Superintendent of Corrections (ASC 1), Saleh Sabo Sa’id that the service in Jama’arsa is a beneficiary of the CITAD programme that provides staff with computers.
Sabo, who is the acting public relations officer of the Jama’are correctional service, said that CITAD afforded the service staff capacity building workshop with certificates that elevated the beneficiaries in their workplace, while others used the certificates to change cadres.
Another beneficiary Malla Isa Adamu is another beneficiary of the CITAD programme who said the hub would be used for multi-internet service provision at any given time in Jama’are, revealing that it costs CITAD N1.5 million to provide data for users to freely use the facility for one year.
Also speaking at the occasion, the national coordinator of, the community national network CITAD Project, Haruna Adamu Hadejia however cried out the raging inflationary trend in the country which the project is experiencing in terms of establishing the proposed 20 hubs in Nigeria.
Hadejia said, “So we experience these types of differentials in terms of cost. Just in the last two months, we are in Abuja where we built the first hub and the money that we spent there. I don’t want to say it doubled now, but it is 1.89 per cent out of two per cent now, so you can see how the market is misbehaving”.