Major broadband projects in Nigeria are planned to be completed this year, according to the country’s minister for information and communications technology Omobola Johnson.

Speaking at a forum in Lagos, Johnson said the President Goodluck Jonathan led-administration is committed to concluding every project it has embarked on before the next election in 2015.

Johnson also said the president had given a specific mandate that the broadband projects, which are poised to usher a high speed internet regime in the country, must be completed this year.

The minister added that government is targeting the transformation of key sectors of the economy under the broadband regime, which is expected to fully take off this year.

According to her, sectors such as education, agriculture, commerce, health, government services, entertainment, security, among others, are expected to be revolutionised using high-speed internet.

Johnson said the ‘revolution’ would be driven within the scope of the 2.3GHz licensing process, which is planned to open up high speed internet services for users.

She expressed government’s commitment to make the licensing process successful.

She said many steps that government further plans to take depends on the success of the auction process.

“There is a wide range of e-government services, which need to be introduced as soon as possible. These include issuing the national identity cards, driving licences and registration of companies, among many others. In order to introduce these services, individual departments require high-speed internet access; so, from government quarters, there is a large latent demand for broadband access service from providers. So we are committed to seeing the success of the new broadband plan to be spearheaded by the spectrum sales,” Johnson said.