Dr. Bashir Gwandu: The Chairman of Commonwealth ITU Group (CIG), was the Executive Commissioner (Technical Services) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), was also the Chairman of Radiocommunications Advisory Group of the ITU (the RAG), and the Vice Chairman of ITU-R Joint Task Group 4567 (JTG-4567). Gwandu has served as the Vice-Chair of Committee 4 of the ITU Radiocommunications Assembly 2012 (RA-12). He became the Chairman of the CIG in March 2012. He was the Acting CEO of the Nigerian Telecoms Regulatory body, the NCC, from June to July 2010. After receiving his BSc in Physics from UsmanDanfodiyo University, Sokoto and an MSc in Applied Physics from the University of Jos, in addition to a brief Engineering service at the Tactical Air-command, Makurdi and lecturing at UsmanDanfodiyo University, Sokoto, he proceeded to the United Kingdom where he attended MSc Courses in Power Electronics and Drives and MSc courses in Communications Engineering; he further obtained an MPhil degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, all from the University of Birmingham. He returned briefly to Usman Danfodiyo University, Sokoto to lecture before going back to the UK to study for a PhD in Electronic/Electrical Engineering at Aston University and subsequently undertook an MBA Finance course at the Birmingham Business School.

Dr Gwandu has designed many devices that are used in the telecom industry some of which have been patented in Europe and United States. He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET) in the UK, and has published over 40 Electronic and Electrical Engineering Research papers in world-class Electrical Engineering journals and conference proceedings. Since 2002, Dr Bashir Gwandu has been involved in research work on Regulation of Utilities.

Dr Gwandu was the Executive Commissioner for Engineering and Technical Standards at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); supervised all Directors/Staff concerned with National Spectrum planning, monitoring, and management, Quality of Service Monitoring and Network Optimization, Equipment Conformance Assessment and Interoperability testing -Type-approval, Numbering Plan, Allocation and Management. He was the Executive Commissioner in Charge of Licensing and Consumer Affairs of the NCC until June 2007. At Licensing, Gwandu supervised the Interconnect rate determination of Sept 2006 that led to improved competition thereby leading to significant reduction in telecom Tariff in Nigeria, the re-classification of Sales and Installation Licenses to Class-Category which has encouraged SMEs entry into the market, the issuance of all the 17 Unified- and hundreds of other Licenses in Nigeria that led to increased competition, the Liberalization of International Gateway for GSM operators that allows for carrying of 3rd Party Traffic thereby reducing tariff for International Calls, the elongation of Access Validity period beyond 90days for all networks on execution of every Revenue Generating Event which has cut down consumer loses and inconveniences, the introduction of Anti- Mobile Phone Theft Scheme in Nigeria to curtail phone theft, the introduction of Tariff Comparison Platform for Consumers so as to aid choice, the abolishing charges to Customer Care Lines, the Limiting of waiting times for answer on Customer Care Lines, the Management of Consumer Parliament, and Management of the Nigerian Internet Exchange project for the ICT Industry, the Improvement of Credit Control system of the NCC to ensure prompt payment of statutory fees by operators, the first ever in-depth NCC investigation into the State of the Quality of Service (QoS) of the Nigerian Telecom Networks. He also led the development of the first ever NCC QoS Regulation, and many other regulatory frameworks of the NCC. He was involved in NCC-based training of personnel from other partner regulatory bodies in different aspects of telecom regulation. Gwandu was part of a number of Nigerian Presidential/Ministerial think-tank committees including Vision-20-2020, Nigerian ICT RoadMap, Panel on University Research funding, and the Launch Committee of the recently Launched Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComsat-1). He represented Nigeria, and sometimes ATU, at the ITU Conferences (such as WRC, WTSA, WSIS, and WTDC) and their preparatory meetings, he is a regular invited speaker at many International Telecom and Telecom Investment Conferences, and has represented Nigeria in many Forums on Telecoms Regulations, and was until recently on the Board of the NigComSat Ltd, and the Board of Digital Bridge Institute.  Gwandu having skills in diverse areas of Engineering, Accounting, Finance, the Art of Regulation and Administration; the key competences required of a utility regulator, was on the Board of NCC

Internationally, Gwandu provided leadership and spoke for the African team on Agenda Item 1.4 of ITU WRC-2007, which was the turning point for Africa on ITU WRC matters. He also led the successful pursuit of the Allocation of 700MHz band to Region 1 during WRC 2012, played a major leadership role in delivering the African goals during the Johannesburg WTSA-08 and Dubai 2012 amongst many other achievements.