FG appoints Yusuf Kazaure as MD Galaxy Backbone

There will be change of guard today in Galaxy Backbone Ltd., where Mr. Yusuf Kazaure, former Executive Director for Corporate Services will take over from Mr. Gerald Ilukwe, pioneer Managing Director, who is retiring after an eight-year maximum statutory tenure.

The new Managing Director is a CommTech for Development expert who kicked it off as foundation CEO of Jigawa State's Galaxy Information Technology and Telecommunication Ltd in 2002. He crossed over to Galaxy Backbone at the latter's incorporation in 2006 and along with Gerald, they built the Company with commendation. He is trained in Architecture, computing, and business.

Galaxy Backbone is Federal Government owned; incorporated as a limited liability firm with mandate to provide Government's connectivity requirements, data hosting and management services for government business. It is perceived to have done very well.

It is one of the two Limited liability firms, the second being NigComSat Ltd which President Olusegun Obasanjo government incorporated against popular professional opinion and whose ill-thought-out mandates were at best warped. For its good management however, Galaxy Backbone waded through the wait-and-see attitude of industry pundits who merely waited to write the epitaph of the two contraptions. Galaxy Backbone gave no such room.

It was the exact opposite at NigComSat Ltd where things wobbled from day one and still is. While Galaxy Backbone's mandate went through careful tapering to what makes it eventually useful to Nigeria today, NigComSat Ltd moved from one contrite mandate to another. Some may even say it is a government firm that was established to develop the engineering of electronic voting. Its mandate remains as unclear as it is unattainable.