Prof. Umar Danbatta, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), says Nigeria has yet to acquire the full dividends of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution.
Danbatta made this known during the 8th Edition of Beacon of Information and Communication Technology (BoICT) Lecture and Awards in Lagos.
Represented by the Executive Commissioner, Stakeholders Management, NCC, Mr Sunday Dare, he said that the ICT revolution had no barriers or frontiers.
“Nigeria, though already plugged into the ICT ecosystem, is yet to harvest fully the dividends of the ICT revolution sweeping across the world.
“While our youth have fully embraced ICT, our government, institutions both public and private are still in the process of adopting ICT in their operations and activities. Yet, the future lies in ICT.
“Nigeria must make deliberate policies that will accelerate ICT penetration.
“Our educational curricular must integrate ICT at all levels of education and our systems and institutions must be brought into compliance by training and re-training our people,” Danbatta said.
He said that though government had made some commendable strides in adopting ICT in various aspects of its operations, more systematic and accelerated approach was still needed.
Danbatta said that ICT had become a one-stop shop for modern tools of development, innovation, employment opportunities and for a smarter world.
He said that as the world moved towards the Fifth Generation (5G) revolution and the Internet of Things (IoT), Nigeria must embrace fully the opportunities offered by the ICT.
He said that Nigeria’s ICT initiatives must focus on cyber crimes, cyber security, indigenous software development, digital multimedia platforms, amongst others.
The convener of BoICT, Mr Ken Nwogbo, said that the lecture aimed at charting the way forward for the ICT sector and put the country on the global ICT map.
Nwogbo said that the awards were to reward best practices and recognise outstanding contributions to the growth of the sector.
He said that the awards were given based on merit and designed to reward individuals and firms that had helped make life better for Nigerians.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NCC won the awards of ”Regulator of the Year” and ”Best Use of Social Media”, while it’s Public Affairs Director, Mr Tony Ojobo, won the ”Spokesman of the Year” award. (NAN)