By Ibiyemi Mathew
President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday commissioned the world class Tier IV data centre built by Galaxy Backbone Limited in Kano.
The President who was on a working visit to Kano amongst other projects he came to commission, also commissioned the North West regional office of Galaxy Backbone Limited.
The Tier IV data centre is the highest ranking data centre in Nigeria and the first public owned data centre in the North.
Speaking at the commissioning, Honorable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Ali Pantami, said the commissioning of the Data Centre is in line with the mandate of the commission for the Ministry to complete the second phase of the (NICTIB) 2 project.
“We cannot truly say we are a knowledge based economy without having a place to store data. The security, reliability, functionality are key ingredients,”Pantami said.
“This is the first ever public Data centre in Northern Nigeria and the best in Nigeria. Also, there is no data centre above this in the whole world because Tier IV Data centre is the best worldwide with a reliability rating of 99.9 per cent. With this kind of reliability, it will help to improve our cybersecurity.
“It will go a long in helping Nigeria consolidate on the Digital economy because Data Centre is key and increase the revenue of government,” Pantami added.
Addresssing further the impact of the data centre, the Managing Director/CEO Galaxy Backbone Limited, Professor Muhammad Abubakar noted that data centres worldwide are bringing changes worldwide in terms of doing business.
He noted that the data center in Kano will allow producers to link up easily with their consumers and in turn the business will flourish.
“If you look at the trajectory of the growth of the ICT sector in Nigeria within the past 3 years, you will notice that the growth has not declined but has continued to move forward. Such is the kind of growth we expect the data centre to bring. In the next five years, we hope to have recorded unprecedented achievements as a result of this world class Tier IV Data Centre, Abubakar said.