Chairman of MTN Nigeria Communications Plc, Dr Ernest Ndukwe(OFR), was honoured as Changemaker in Telecommunications and Digital Development at the Daily Times Nigeria Centenary Honours held at Harbour Point, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. He received the award before an audience of business leaders, regulators and media executives in recognition of his role in opening Nigeria’s telecommunications sector to competition and growth.
The Daily Times Nigeria Centenary Honours formed part of a broader centenary programme featuring the Shaping the Future Town Hall and the Honouring the Past Exhibition, organised under the theme, “Honouring the Past, Shaping the Future.” Designed to celebrate key figures and institutions whose leadership, enterprise, and innovation across technology, media, banking, energy, public service, manufacturing, and national growth have defined the nation’s first century of journalism, the awards also set a foundation for its future.
Ndukwe led the NCC as Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from 2000 to 2010. In that period, he presided over the liberalisation of the sector and the introduction of GSM services, a shift that moved Nigeria from fewer than half a million working telephone lines at the start of the decade to 50 million active subscribers by the time he left office, and which laid the regulatory foundation for the mobile money, data and digital services the economy now runs on.
Receiving the award, Ndukwe described the newspaper’s centenary as a national landmark rather than a corporate one. “Daily Times at 100 represents an extraordinary milestone, not only for the newspaper but for the nation and its rich history. Reaching this landmark speaks to a century of resilience, institutional legacy and enduring contributions to Nigeria’s media landscape. I sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time to join us in celebrating this historic occasion.”
The MTN Nigeria chairman was recognised alongside other honourees drawn from the country’s banking, manufacturing and marketing communications sectors. Among those listed by the organisers were the founder of Zenith Bank Plc, Mr Jim Ovia, CFR, and the Chairman of Troyka Group and Insight Publicis, Dr Biodun Shobanjo, CON, both named Changemakers of the Century; the founder and President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, GCON, who received the Centenary Excellence Award and BUA Group, named Conglomerate of the Decade.
Daily Times Nigeria, founded in 1926 and for decades the most widely read newspaper in the country, the title used its centenary to tie its own survival to the stories of the institutions it has covered from the arrival of indigenous banking. The accompanying exhibition and town hall sessions were presented as an attempt to read that record forward, with the organisers framing the honours as a bridge between Nigeria’s documented past and its digital future.