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| Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson |
Rufai said this while briefing the Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, who was on tour of the premises of the satellite company in Abuja on Monday.
The Federal Government had in October 2010 embarked on the construction of the network in order to check the several security challenges confronting the nation.
When completed, the network will enable security agencies to monitor and record suspicious movements across the nation.
The NigComSat boss said N77bn was the amount the Federal Government would have spent annually had it decided to patronise commercial networks for the communications needs of security organisations in the country.
He also disclosed that NigComSat, which is responsible for the construction of the public security system, would manage and market excess capacity on the network.
“The network will enable the security agencies to talk to each other and share information. That hardly happens now. Each security agency operates on its own now. The public security system will change that,” Rufai said.
He disclosed that 76 out of the 1,000 surveillance cameras meant for the first phase of the network had already been deployed in the Federal Capital Territory, while 400 would be deployed before the end of the month.
According to him, the surveillance cameras will hit 60,000 by the time they are deployed throughout the country.
Survey work for Lagos, he added, was already being undertaken.
The spate of kidnappings, armed robberies and bombings had raised security as a top priority for both the government and the citizenry in recent times with the government seeking technology assistance to curb the menace of insecurity.
The public security network is part of the technology solution that the Federal Government had sought to check the wave of violent crimes.
Given that some of the crimes are committed with the assistance of communications technology, the Federal Government recently insisted that all mobile telephone Subscriber Identification Module cards must be registered in order to get a database of mobile phone users.
The Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSat-1R) that will go into the orbit in December is expected to provide the transmission backbone for the public security network, as it is designed to be an all-Internet Protocol network.
The satellite will be used to backhaul Internet Protocol from the United States and Europe into Nigeria to ensure there is national coverage everywhere at all times.
The NigcomSat boss also told the minister that plans had reached advanced stages for the launch of a second communications satellite by 2014 and a third one by 2015.
Before then, he said the company would lease capacity from other satellite operators to complement NigComSat-1R and achieve redundancy.
The minister expressed appreciation for the ongoing work at NigComSat, but urged the company to take steps to inform the public about the various products that it had developed through its research and development department.
She said the Federal Government planned to use Information and Communications Technology platforms to create jobs and achieve transparency in governance.
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