Introduction

Successful organizations place strategy at the center of the management process, providing a framework for prioritizing programs and projects, facilitating the achievement of organizational goals and objectives, monitoring progress regularly, ensuring optimal use of resources through a focus on key priorities, and ensuring that the important things are measured thus enhancing efficiency, effectiveness and productivity.

A Strategic Management Plan (SMP) is a document used to communicate within the organization the organization's goals, set priorities, focus energy, configure resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. The Plan is what will drive the comprehensive collection of ongoing activities and processes that the organizations will use to systematically coordinate and align resources and actions with mission, vision and strategy. It is intended to transform the organization's management and operations into a system that provides strategic performance feedback to decision making and enables the plan to evolve and grow as requirements and other circumstances change.

Consequently, formal strategic planning, with the development of a Strategic Management Plan, was introduced and adopted by the NCC in the year 2002 as the main driver of its service delivery process. Its first plan, a five-year plan (2003-2007), was later adjusted to a three-year plan (2004-2006). This adjustment was informed by the level of dynamism with which events were unfolding in the Nigerian telecommunication space. The plan continued to undergo several modifications and revisions up to its termination in 2009. In 2012, the Commission engaged Messrs PriceWaterhouseCoopers and RoseQueen to assist with the development of a new 5-year Strategic Management Plan (SMP) for the period 2014-2018 to provide the roadmap to the future.

Introduction

The Nigerian Communications Commission has a history of strategic planning and this journey started with the adoption of a Strategic Management Plan ("SMP" or "the Plan") in the year 2002 as the main driver of its service delivery process. Hence, its first SMP was for five years, from 2003-2007. The Commission’s last Strategic Management Plan (SMP 2014 – 2018) expired at the end of 2018.

The process for the development of a new SMP commenced in earnest with appropriate internal arrangements put in place to ensure a more robust participation of staff and key stakeholders. The new Strategic Management Plan covers a five-year period, 2020-2024.

The SMP 2020 - 2024 includes NCC’s reviewed Mission and Vision in line with the Commission’s mandate as stipulated in the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA), 2003. The SMP reinforces its Core Values as the guiding principles that will mould its culture and underpin the effective execution of the Plan. The Plan reviews the internal situation analysis of NCC, and its external business environment (both macro- and microenvironments) and identifies key issues that must be addressed. A stakeholder analysis was carried out to review key stakeholder needs and to identify the stakeholder value proposition.

The SMP highlights the desired outcomes/strategic results, specifies strategic objectives and the initiatives as well as actions that will be carried out to achieve the objectives. It also states the key performance indicators to measure effectiveness of the Strategic Plan and performance of NCC as an organisation.