The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbannaya Onu, on Monday in Laqgos inaugurated a N500 million Tier three Data Centre to support the activities of the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE).
He said that the centre had the potential to help the NSE compete favourably with some of ‘best exchanges’ in the world, if performed well.
He said that the government’s effort had always geared towards ensuring that the country stopped growing the economy in a particular direction, particularly from being a mono commodity-based.
The minister also said that the particular direction had made the nation to feel the effect of the changes in the oil market but assured that the government was ready to change from that direction.
According to him, there are collaborations with relevant establishments that can contribute to the success of the centre.
Ogbonnaya said that the government had engaged in relationships and interactions with research institutes through the Federal Ministry of Technology and Science to come up with researches that were market driven to create more jobs and wealth.
He said the centre was necessary because of the relevance of the stock exchange to the development of the economy.
The minister urged the NSE to consider listing of more Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) as agents of growth in any economy.
The Chief Executive Officer of the NSE, Mr Oscar Onyema said that the centre would be helped to reduce the level of redundancy in terms of power supply and cooling of water to support bourse’s activities.
Onyema said that the centre would help the eco-system that would want to co-locate with the hosting services to the exchange.
He described the centre as a modular designed data centre with state-of-the-art facilities for vision monitoring activities.
The NSE boss said that the centre would only focus on its constituency, primarily only on brokers activities but might later expand it to quoted companies and others.