Accolades, Commendations As NCC Director Wins Prestigious CIO Awards

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The status of the Nigerian Communications Commission as a flagship public sector brand, got another fillip recently when Engr. Abraham Oshadami, a Deputy Director at the Commission and Head of Spectrum Database Management, was declared winner of the CIO OF THE YEAR AWARD for Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), a nomenclature for one of the awards to the public sector group.


The Award, conferred on Oshadami at Oriental Hotel Lagos on 26th November 2021, “celebrates and honours successful and outstanding individuals and organisations that are using digital innovation and information technology systems to bring about real growth and transformation to businesses”. Oshadami was Head of NCC’s Information Technology Department from 2016 until 1st September, 2021 when he was reassigned to Spectrum Administration Department in keeping with the Commission’s strategic realignment.


Organised annually by Edniesal Consulting Limited – an enterprise governance and corporate services firm – the Chief Information Officer (CIO) award is given in both public and private sector categories to Nigerian or African citizens or persons eligible to work in Nigeria. Such persons/executives must be serving in the capacity of senior Information Technology Executives, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Digital Officers, or Chief Information Officers, and their entities must have been registered and doing business for at least two years by July 31 when entries are submitted for assessment annually.


The CIO Award by Edniesal Consulting Limited is the “Largest CIO Awards in Africa”. The awards are in different categories, namely: MDAs, banking, telecoms, insurance, technology, energy, etc.
Participants, who are usually persons primarily responsible for IT operations in the organisations they work, officially submit applications,  which are reviewed by a project team. The reviews are forwarded to an interim jury which undertakes the first major assessment. The Interim Jury then presents three top nominees in each category to a Grand Jury for assessment. The grand jury conducts an assessment and presents a list of final winners to an Independent Assurance Team for a final review and submission of report.


This is the process Engr. Oshadami’s application passed through and he’s adjudged the best CIO in all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of government as the best of the public sector executives supervising Information Technology operations where they work. The NCC website, one of the items in the purview of the IT Department of the NCC which Oshadami supervised for 5 years, is been serially referred to as a forest of resources, due to the volume and quality of resources therein and its reliability as a source of credible information to journalists, other communication professionals and several close and far-flung stakeholders seeking information about Nigeria’s telecom sector.


In 2018, the Nigerian Communications Commission’s website was adjudged the Best Website of the Year in the MDAs’ Category by the Nigerian Online Merit Awards (NIOMA). The award particularly noted the NCC website as the most “interactive, current, relevant and error-free” among all MDA websites assessed.
In a related development, The Nigerian Communications Commission also launched a consumer-centric outreach programme tagged, “Shine your eyes, no fall mugu”, which literally translates to, “Be alert, Don’t be a victim of fraudsters”.


An initiative of the Commission’s Consumer Affairs Bureau (CAB), the programme is specially conceived and implemented using Nigerian pidgin. It’s intended for a segment of the telecom consumer population who are more comfortable with localised communication that resonates with their reality.
The two-day programme, implemented in three phases, started with a road show. The Show featured local artists and comedians who displayed musical and other performances to amuse and entertain people to create awareness and sensitise telecom consumers about how cybercriminals may use telecom platforms to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.


This programme, coming on the heels of NCC’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (which occurred in October), and the annual National Cybersecurity Conference, which took place on 3rd November 2021, is meant to reinforce the messages of cyber awareness, cyber vigilance, and cyber smartness to telecom consumers whenever they are online.

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