By Seun Adams
The new and substantive Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer (EVC/CEO) of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) Dr. Bashir Gwandu has officially resumed office at the NASENI Headquarters, Abuja, on Monday.
The Director, Information and Protocol of the agency, Mr. Segun Ayeoyenikan, in a statement made available to the media, said Gwandu took over from the Officer Overseeing the activities of the Agency, Mrs. Nonyem Onyechi, following the appointment of Gwandu as the new helmsman of the agency by President Muhammadu Buhari, who doubles as the Chairman Governing board of NASENI.
Gwandu’s appointment, he said was conveyed in a letter dated 19th May, 2023 from the Office of the Secretary to The Government of The Federation Ref; no SGF.51/S.4/T/93 addressed to Gwandu followed the expiration of 10-year tenure of five years each by the former EVC/CEO of the agency, Prof. Mohammed Sani Haruna in April, 2023 and the subsequent directive by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) to Haruna to handover the affairs of the agency to the most senior officer, pending when a substantive EVC/CEO would be appointed.
The effective date of Dr. Bashir Gwandu’s appointment as the EVC/CEO of NASENI was 12th of May,2023.
The new NASENI boss on arrival at the agency on Monday began with the tour of the agency’s facilities. He was conducted round the facilities by Mrs. Nonyem Onyechi in company of other Management staff.
Gwandu Holds a BSc and a number of Masters degrees, as well as a PhD in Electrical Engineering from prestigious Universities around the world.
He has designed many devices that are used in the telecoms, oil/gas, power, defense, and aviation industries, some of which have been patented in Europe and the United States.
He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer, and one of the Fellows of the prestigious Institution of Engineering Technology (IET) UK since 2010 (being one of the few Engineers of African origin that attained IET Fellowship ranking).
Whilst in the academia, he published over 40 Electronic and Electrical Engineering Research papers in world Class Electrical Engineering Journals and Conference proceedings. His technical publications are very highly cited internationally, which is an attestation of their high standard of quality.
Gwandu, who served as Acting EVC/CEO of the NCC in 2010, was the Executive Commissioner for Engineering and Technical Standards at the NCC; supervised all Directors/Staff concerned with National Spectrum planning, monitoring, and management, Quality of Service Monitoring and Network Optimization, Equipment Conformance Assessment and Interoperability Testing-Type-approval, Numbering Plan, Allocation and Management. He was the Executive Commissioner in charge of Licensing and Consumer Affairs of the NCC until June 2007. He was involved in NCC-based training of personnel from other partner regulatory bodies of Africa in different aspects of telecom regulation.
Gwandu was part of a number of Nigerian Presidential/Ministerial think-tank committees including; Vision-20-2020, Nigerian ICT RoadMap, the first Panel of Experts that vets and approves University Research funding applications under TETFund, the Launch Committee of the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComsat-1) and the National Broadband Plan 2020-2025 etc. He represented Nigeria and sometimes Africa, as a lead speaker at a number of UN World Telecommunications Conferences.