Nigeria ICT Sector: A Geek’s Perspective

Whilst I recognize the ambient efforts of my dear country towards technological development, I still believe that Nigeria has a long way to go in the ICT sector, considering prevailing factors like the limited access to ICT infrastructure, including fixed and mobile telephony services ratio, Internet and broadband service penetration.  Truly, the noticeable gain from ICT always result to the increase in productivity which is enabled by easier and efficient communication, facilitated by increased access to telephone and then Internet.

No wonder, ICT had opened up access to the vast information resources available on the Internet, and we are therefore better empowered and now have better opportunity than before to get ourselves updated in various areas of endeavour especially via the Internet. There are indeed several other indications that considerable progress had been made in the information technology and telecoms sector since the advent of democracy in Nigeria, and the awareness of the potentials of using ICT to transform the nation‘s economy is already widespread among policy makers and leaders of the organized private sector.

Nigeria is, indeed, developing in the area of ICT but there are still some loopholes, which are affecting its total advancement in this area. According to an ITU report, the index used in selecting the top 154 countries advanced in ICT combined different factors as benchmarking tool globally, regionally and at the country level.  ”These are related to ICT access, use and skills, such as households with a computer as well as the number of Internet users; and literacy levels,” the body said. 

The major challenge about this report in Nigeria is that the use of computer, access to Internet and other tools of ICT are limited greatly to the urban areas, and the challenges faced by the ICT sector in the country include particularly the fact that the people in the rural areas are yet to know how to use the computer and other ICT trends.

These challenges could be resolve in various ways, and basically, as I always believe, a good environment for the rapid growth of ICT in the rural area is very important; and the one and only essential and major player is the government both at the grassroots and federal level. 

For me, I feel that the government should work on policies that affect the ICT sector; the cost of acquiring IT tools should be subsidized to encourage acquisition of such tools, even as more Public Private Partnership structures are cemented especially in the area of infrastructural development. 

But then, ICT resources should be readily available to promote national development, create an enabling business environment and facilitate private sector (national and multinational) investments with government and private sector joint venture collaborations encouraged. There should be a special incentive programme to induce investment in the sector; there should equally be the need to promote legislations for the protection of online business transactions, to ensure adequate privacy security and privacy. 

Technology today has become an important factor in the economic growth and development of countries. The greatest indicator is the formulation of relevant telecoms and IT policies, as well as the empowerment of an independent regulator for the sector. 

Though the government has taken several steps to create an environment good enough to attract investment and ventures by entrepreneurs, a lot still need to be done to check the prevailing anomalies in terms of existing infrastructure.

Jethro is the Webmaster at National Ambassador Online