Fake news maliciously circulated on social media by enemies and detractors of President Bio’s New Direction government alleged that a whopping Le40 billion has been squandered by the new NATCOM administration.

Most absurdly, the fake news claimed that, the NATCOM DG and a sister of President Bio are the brains behind the scam.
For a better understanding of the personality and integrity of the NATCM DG and his firm commitment to President Bio’s New Direction aspiration of doing away with indiscipline, financial recklessness and lack of transparency in governance, below is a detailed profile of the NATCOM DG.
See full resume of the New NATCOM DG below:

RESUME OF THE NEW NATCOM DIRECTOR GENERAL MR. MAXWELL HINGHA MASSAQUOI
Mr. Maxwell Hingha Massaquoi, the recently appointed Director-General at the National Telecommunications Commission (NATCOM), is a seasoned Telecommunications and Information Technology (IT) professional with over 20 years international experience in numerous areas to include, Telecommunications Regulatory Governance, Telecommunications Operations Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS), Telecommunications Audit, Mobile Number Portability, Number Management, Interconnection, Software Solution Specification, Design, Testing and Implementations, and has been involved in leading several SDLC implementation projects, from conception to maintenance and support across a variety of international borders.

Mr. Massaquoi is extremely grateful to the Good Lord in granting His Excellency the President of this great Republic, Retired Brigadier-General Julius Maada Bio, the pleasure and judgement to identify the qualities in Mr. Massaquoi and Mr. Daniel Kaitibi for their new appointments at NATCOM.
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Mr. Massaquoi completed his primary education at the Services Primary School at Teko Army Barracks, Makeni and completed his secondary education at the T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia (USA) in 1991. Mr. Massaquoi attended (1991-1995) Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and completed in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics. He attended (1995-1997) Howard University in Washington, DC and completed in 1997 with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. Upon completing his coursework at Howard University, in January of 1998, Mr. Massaquoi started his professional career (as a Telecommunications Regulatory Governance, OSS and BSS Consultant) with the United States based global telecommunications research firm, Bell Communications Research Inc. (Bellcore), now a subsidiary of Ericsson. Mr. Massaquoi has also worked at the global consulting firm, Deloitte Consulting (formerly KPMG Consulting), participating and supervising several telecommunications consultancy engagements, including serving as a public telecommunications unbundling and competition lead (for CLECs) with the State Corporate Commission (SCC) of the Commonwealth of Virginia and also the Florida Public Service Commission, working towards the full implementation of the US Telecommunications Act of 1996 (unbundling of monopoly in the long distance and local markets).

BUSINESS SOLUTION ANALYST
He has also worked for other leading firms to include, Telarix (a global leader in the telecommunications interconnect and wholesale billing software space, with headquarters in Vienna, Virginia) and Acumen Solutions (Maclean, Virginia).

Throughout his professional career, Mr. Massaquoi has also obtained direct experience as a management consultant and Trusted Advisor to several international entities and clients, tasked with specifying, designing, implementing and maintaining enterprise-grade software solutions, spanning several countries. He has contributed towards the delivery of several telecommunications billing application systems for various leading global service providers to include ETB (Bogota, Colombia), ENT (Quito, Ecuador), Telecel-Claro (Mexico and Panama), Tigo (Santa Cruz, Bolivia), British Telecom’s Global Research and Development Headquarters (Martlesham, England), Alltel (Arkansas, USA), Vodafone-Connex GSM (Bucharest, Romania), Nextel-Sprint (Virginia, USA), Etisalat-Nigeria, and Gemtel (Juba, South Sudan). Mr. Massaquoi, as a Professional Services Consultant, has also served other clients including, the National Communications Authority (Accra, Ghana), JP Morgan Chase Investment Bank, Uganda Telecom (Lap Green), Oricel (Cote d’Ivoire), Glo Mobile (Nigeria), Ameritech, BellSouth, Amdocs Billing Software, Convergys Billing, ADC Telecom, NASSIT, General Services Agency - GSA (Liberia), Bell Atlantic (Verizon), MCI WorldCom, Pacific Bell, SBC, and Telkom South Africa.
Mr. Massaquoi possesses solid background knowledge and experience as Business Solution Analyst and Project Manager for numerous enterprise-grade software implementation projects across several countries not only for telecommunications operational and business support systems but also for several Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Government Resource Planning (GRP) software implementation and deployment projects or programs for central governments, across several countries. He has managed several IFMIS and or GRP/ERP projects and resources in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, South Sudan and most recently, The Bahamas, where he was the Project Team Leader in successfully bidding for a US$35m, and five (5) year project (funded by the Inter-American Development Bank - IADB) with a program focus of implementing and deploying a new IFMIS platform in support of ongoing Public Financial Management (PFM) and Performance Management Reporting (PMR) reforms with the Government of The Bahamas (GOBH).
IFMIS PROJECT MANAGER
In Sierra Leone, as the government’s IFMIS Project Manager, Mr. Massaquoi is directly credited for the drastic and monumental improvements to the IFMIS platform, six months into his tenure (2015 to 2016), that saw the rolling out of IFMIS to eighteen (18) additional Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs). It must be noted that, within the Government of Sierra Leone (GOSL), during the period, 2004 to 2015, IFMIS was rolled out to just twelve (12) MDAs. Thus, under the astute and directional leadership of Mr. Massaquoi as the GOSL’s IFMIS Project Manager, the number of MDAs with direct access to the government’s IFMIS platform increased by 150 percent and as a result, the government saved over US$4.1m in comparison to the situation inherited by Mr. Massaquoi as the IFMIS Project Manager. He was instrumental in the setting up of the computerized system in support of the initial government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) processes and played a leading role in the design, specification and implementation of Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) interface between the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL).
In addition to Sierra Leone, Mr. Massaquoi has served in similar capacity (IFMIS Project Manager) in Uganda and Liberia under the aegis of successful IFMIS and or PFM Information System implementations and deployments across Africa.
Further, Mr. Massaquoi’ s background knowledge and experience in the global telecommunications space was called upon by the GOSL for the initial setup of NATCOM in 2007 and he oversaw the designing of the initial organizational structure of the National Telecommunications Commission and Mr. Massaquoi is credited for unveiling the acronym, “NATCOM” in 2007. Due to his performance and outputs as a Regulatory Governance Consultant at NATCOM in early 2007, a visiting World Bank team placed a recommendation to the Commission for Mr. Massaquoi to be appointed as the “Executive Secretary” (Director-General) for NATCOM.
VALUE-FOR-MONEY
In 2009, Mr. Massaquoi was again tasked to lead the restructuring of NATCOM.
As the new Director-General (DG) at NATCOM, Mr. Massaquoi is already leveraging his strong background knowledge in the global telecommunications space to push Sierra Leone’s telecommunications sector forward in a “New Direction” and into a new dimension for a healthy and competitive telecoms market. The new NATCOM management under Mr. Massaquoi will focus on promoting and implementing policies that foster fair competition, access, tariff transparency, affordability, parity, regulatory transparency and certainty, sector investments, expansion of the country’s ICT ecosystem, regional integration and collaboration. Mr. Massaquoi is already far ahead in getting Sierra Leone to join the Republic of Guinea in activating and establishing the “Free Roaming” agreement for ECOWAS and he plans to bring Liberia into a similar setup with Sierra Leone.
In 2016 (March 11, 2016), NATCOM published data and results of the Commission’s effort as required by the Telecommunications Act, 2006 (Subsection 2(b) of Section 9), with regard to “the quality of telecommunications services,” in determining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and subsequently, to apply the designated KPIs in monitoring, recording and reporting on the quality of the telecommunications services provisioned by licensed operators.
POSITIONED THE COMMISSION
Since that last public announcements (in 2016) by NATCOM on the Quality of Service (QoS) with regards to Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), almost two (2) years have since elapsed, with no recorded or reported effort by the Commission to engage the public in pointing out the overall performance (in terms of QoS) of the licensed MNOs across Sierra Leone.

Nonetheless, in less than three (3) months in office, the new DG and DDG have positioned the Commission to present its first monthly QoS report in the last 2 years and with the October 2018 QoS report for licensed MNOs to be published in the coming days. This represents a drastic turn-of-event and a move away from the NATCOM inherited by this new administration. The new management is close to completing the introduction of a tool or system that will support the monitoring of mobile data usage by the end-user customers of the licensed MNOs across the country. The measurements of the quality of the mobile data services being provisioned by the MNOs and comparing the announced (by the MNOs) unit cost of mobile data to the actual usage of these services, will be a focal point in the Commission’s strategic thrust towards tariff transparency and ensuring quality in the county’s public telecommunications network. The new management, with the guidance of the Board of Commissioners, will ensure that, licensed services provisioned (by the operators) for consumers meet all the predefined standards set by the government and NATCOM. The Commission will always work towards ensuring that the consumers will get value-for-money with all subscriptions for public telecommunications services across Sierra Leone.

The new Board of Commissioners and management of NATCOM will ensure that, all licensed service providers within Sierra Leone meet their “end of the bargain” with the consumers.
Further, under the new management, NATCOM is poised to engage the sector stakeholders in ensuring that a level playing field is available across the sector and with specific emphasis being directed towards identifying and blocking sector revenue leakages and optimizing the revenue streams of the national government in as far as the domestic telecommunications sector is concerned. The new DG and his team are already examining available options for the Commission to increase the government’s share of the revenue derived from international call termination settlements via the international telecommunications gateway and also, meaningfully looking at options in reducing the domestic voice interconnection rate (per minute) between licensed operators and by extension, reducing the cost of “off-net” calls to the consumer/voter and fostering movement towards eliminating the “2-sim” or “2-phone” culture prevalent today.
ACCESS TO ICT

Mr. Massaquoi has embarked on a strong and well-planned effort and program of enhancing the capacity of the Commission’s staff and Human Resources. The entity has now seen, since the new DG and Deputy Director-General (DDG) took up office, direct dividends of this policy. The new DG has always been keen on capacitating and promoting his fellow Sierra Leoneans and has demonstrated this even with engagements he has managed outside of Sierra Leone. Mr. Massaquoi will recruit several Sierra Leoneans during his tenure as an IFMIS Project Manager with the Government of Liberia (GOL). Most recently, upon accepting his new appointment as DG, NATCOM, and after informing the Bahamas project team of his new appointment, Mr. Massaquoi will successfully recommend another seasoned Sierra Leonean IT and PFM project management professional to replace Mr. Massaquoi as the Project Manager of the PFM/PMR Project with the GOBH (Ministry of Finance, The Bahamas).

The new executive leadership at NATCOM will promote access to ICT for underserved areas and intends to implement measures that will encourage the reduction of the cost of telecommunications services to the consuming public and by extension, the associated costs to the licensed service providers to provision, transport and deliver telecommunications services to their end-user customers across Sierra Leone.