Although Nigeria has achieved tremendous growth in Information and Communications Technology, ICT, since independence, the booming sector is also going through some challenges. Despite tremendous success recorded in ICT sincethe liberalization of the sector, there are still tremendous opportunities for growth, job and wealth creation that must be harnessed by government.
Former President/ Chairman of Council, Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria, CPN, Alhaja Sekinat Yusuf, newly elected CPN President/ Chairman of Council, Prof. Vincent Asor, and the Registrar/ Secretary to Council, CPN, S.A Shehu at the just concluded CPN 2015 IT Assembly held in Cross River Calaba. Photo by Emeka AginamICT experts at the just concluded 2015 Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria, CPN , IT Assembly with theme “Developments in Information Technology in Nigeria: The Gains, Challenges and Way Forward” while taking stock of the industry rose up from the conference saying that there was need for strict regulation, better funding, deployment of fibre optic network by the government, among others.Earlier in his report, the Registrar/ Secretary to the Council of CPN, S.A Sikiru while admitting that the Nigerian IT Profession has no doubt established its presence and relevance in the development of the nation noted that the year under review was characterized by some challenges especially funding.Even with the financial constraints coupled with the general apprehension in the country on security, he said that CPN was not deterred from carrying out its regulatory functions.
The regulation:“The Act 49 of 1993 makes mandatory for all persons and organizations seeking to engage or engaged in the sale or use of computing facilities, and/ or provision of professional services in computing in the country to be registered by the Council and licensed to carry out such activities.“It is definitely illegal to engage in computing professional practice without satisfying the above condition, registration and possession of currency valid license”, he noted. Admitting that poor funding of the Nigerian IT sector remains amajor obstacle to digital economy, he said that reality puts the IT professionals at a crucial position in determining the direction and pace of the nation’s development.
“We should not allow mediocrity and quackery in whatever form in the industry. That is the only way to position the IT industry in the national scheme of things”he added.Fibre networkIn the opinion of Professor Zsolt Lipcsey of the department of the Computer Science, University of Calabar, in his paper titled: ‘’Emerging technologies for national development,” the biggest obstacle to the development of the Nigerian ICT sector is lack of fibre network.“Due to market failures, including in discriminate access to the submarine cable capacity and international gateways,exorbitant back haul and interconnection fees, expensive domestic transit prices and lack intercity fibre connectivity and weak and uncompetitive broadband access infrastructure, the bandwidth is not used.
Nigeria is one of the countries with these symptoms”, he explained.Speaking during the opening ceremony, Austin Okere in his keynote address told the gathering that no nation can plan, develop, compete or aspire without the efficient use of information technology. He said the nation was faced with myriad of challenges, particularly the issue of qualityeducation.“Our education system and computing curriculum do not equip student with requisite skills needed to face present day technology tasks neither is it preparing ournation for future challenges. To fight corruption, the nationa has to rely on IT.
The burden of innovation, towards actualizing our joint aims in this generation lies on us”Data and privacy policiesAnother major challenge the industry faces, according to him is the existing dataprotection and privacy policies. “ Data is wealth. Data is part of our natural resources. And in today’s knowledge based economy, data is about everything. The Federal Government forecasted that it would generate annual revenue of 6.8 trillion naira ($34.2bn) this year from oil and gas sales.Some of the biggest technology companies generate in multiples of this from the sales of “Big data” in some form. An example of such is WhatsApp” he explained.While Nigerians patronize all these companies heavily and contribute their data freely for them to process, store and ultimately sell, he said that these companies among others do not have any motivation for infrastructure development in Nigeria.
GainsNigeria has recorded a number of attainments using Information Communications Technology, over the years, despite been a technology consumer nation with relatively low presence in the global ICT value chain. Notable among these, he said is the civil service reform which resulted in the identification of 62,892 ghost workers and saved the nation about 208.76 billion nairaannually in the federal civil service alone.Nigeria, according to him, has also increased exponentially in the telecommunication space. All the leading telecommunication companies rely on the IT platforms and standards in the provision and growth of all their multi-billionaire services, he said.Set the right standard:“Despite all challenges facing the IT industry, We need to continually set the right standards required to ensure we remain globally competitive and also ensure we hold ourselves accountable to the standards.
We need to revise existing computing curriculum in our tertiary institutions to focus on discovery and experimentation of IT in order to increase our national wealth.Also speaking, the Presidential aspirant of the Nigerian Computer Society, NCS, Chris Uwaje said that the CPN should encouragethe Federal Government to establishment of the Office of the Chief Information Technology Officer of the Federation, refocus national IT Development Agenda on Digital Knowledge Capacity building and National Software Development, establish a Presidential ICT Advisory council chaired by the President, among others.
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