The substantive Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer (EVC/CEO) of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Dr Bashir Gwandu officially resumed duties at the NASENI Headquarters, Abuja, on Monday.
The Director, Information and Protocol of the agency, Mr Segun Ayeoyenikan, in a statement, said Gwandu took over from the officer overseeing the activities of the Agency, Mrs Nonyem Onyechi.
This, it said, was consequent upon the appointment of Gwandu as the new helmsman of the agency by President Muhammadu Buhari.
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.
Gwandu’s appointment followed the expiration of the 10-year tenure ( 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 the 12th of May,2023.
The new NASENI boss, on arrival at the agency on Monday, undertook a tour of the agency’s facilities.
He was conducted round the facilities by Mrs Nonyem Onyechi in company with other management staff members
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, defence, 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).
While in 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.
