Omobola Johnson

Dr. Omobola Johnson
Honourary Chairperson, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI)
Incumbent
Assumed office September, 2015
Personal details
Born	28 June 1963
Alma mater	University of Manchester King's College London Cranfield University

Omobola Olubusola Johnson (born 28 June 1963) is a Nigerian technocrat and the Honourary Chairperson of the global Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI).^[1] She is also a former Minister of Communication Technology in the cabinet of President Goodluck Jonathan.^[2]

Education

She was educated at the International School Ibadan and the University of Manchester (BEng, Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and King's College London (MSc, Digital Electronics). She has a PhD from Cranfield University.^[3][4]

Career

Prior to her Ministerial appointment she was country managing director for Accenture, Nigeria. She had worked with Accenture since 1985 when it was Anderson Consulting. Johnson is the pioneer head of the country's communication technology ministry, which was created as part of the transformation agenda of the Nigerian government.^[5]

Johnson co-founded a women's organization, WIMBIZ in 2001. She has earned several public commendation since taking up her first government assignment as minister in 2011. This is following the numerous achievements of her ministry notably among which is the launch of the NigComSat-IR Satellite.^[6] This has helped to complement the country's efforts at fibre connectivity and the provision of greater bandwidth. The ministry under her watch has also deployed more than 700 personal computers to secondary schools in the first phase of School Access Programme (SAP) while about 193 tertiary institutions in the country now have internet access in the Tertiary Institution Access Programme ( TIAP) and 146 communities have access to Community Communication Centers deployed around the country.^[7]

Other achievements of the ministry under Johnson include:

A collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria to drive digital and financial inclusion using the Post Office infrastructure; 10Gbs Fibre optic Network to connect Nigerian Universities to wider research and education universe, in partnership with the NUC, World Bank and TetFund; Facilitating e-Government drive with over 86,000 email addresses deployed for Government use on the .gov.ng domain names, and 250 websites hosted on .gov.ng platform as well as 382 MDAs connected in Abuja Abuja and other parts of the country; Creating the enabling environment for local development of iPad-equivalent tablets; Signing of an MoU with Nokia to establish a lab in Nigeria to support the domestic mobile software industry; Inauguration of the National Council on Information Communication Technology with state / FCT Commissioner of ICT as members.

On 30 May 2013, Omobola presented the Nigerian National Broadband Plan for 2013 to 2018 to President Goodluck Jonathan.^[8] Following a minor cabinet reshuffle In September 2013 by President Goodluck Jonathan, she was given an extra task of supervising the operations of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology.^[9]

References

1. "a4ai welcomes Dr. Omobola Johnson as new honorary chair".
2. "Omobola Johnson". Omobola Johnson – World Economic Forum.
3. "Omobola Johnson". cranfield.ac.uk.
4. http://fmst.gov.ng/
5. Super User. "About the Ministry". commtech.gov.ng.
6. NIGCOMSAT LTD. "Nigeria Communications Satellite LTD". nigcomsat.com.
7. Boss Africa. "Boss Africa Magazine – Nigerian Women at the Top : Omobola Johnson Olubusola Honorable Minister of Communication Technology". bossafricamagazine.com.
8. http://commtech.gov.ng/index.php/78-featured/167-nig-national-broadband-plan-2
9. http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/top-stories/5334-ministers-fired-in-target-of-rebel-govs