Professor Muhammad Bello Abubakars first year as the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Backbone Limited GBB, covering the period from January 2 to December 31, 2020, was characterized by significant achievements in strategic repositioning and operational efficiency, despite it being one of the most challenging years in the organizations history. Appointed to spearhead the Federal Government's vision of a digital economy, the new administration focused on delivering state-of-the-art digital infrastructure and services for a Digital Nigeria. This change in leadership resulted in an immediate, successful overhaul and a clear articulation of the strategic direction for the company.
A major and immediate success was GBBs critical response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring the continuity of government operations. Following a directive from the Minister of Communications Digital Economy, Professor Abubakar led the rapid establishment of virtual interaction platforms and leveraged GBBs infrastructure to provide connectivity at the residences of key government functionaries. This initiative was vital, ensuring that essential government business, including the weekly virtual meetings of the Federal Executive Council FEC and other Ministries, Departments, and Agencies MDAs, continued seamlessly despite the restrictions on movement.
Internally, the management focused on strategic repositioning for growth by implementing a number of initiatives to drive value improvement, rationalise costs, and enhance the quality of services. This included addressing anomalies in both technical and financial operations, as well as initiating comprehensive human resources and capacity development tactics. Notably, the innovative review of the procurement process for service capacity resulted in the aggregation and redesign of bandwidth capacity requirements, which achieved significant cost savings, better network traffic management, and delivered a phenomenal boost to GBBs overall bandwidth. Furthermore, the administration demonstrated transformational leadership by creating new functional units, including a Research, Digital Innovation, and Skills Department, which helped to revitalise relationships with stakeholders and customers.
