At a time when the safety of a nation against threats, such as terrorism, war or espionage has gone beyond physical methods, stakeholders in the Information and Communications Technology, ICT, industry are charging the nation to get its digital acts right.
For Mr Chris Uwaje, former President, Institute of Software Providers of Nigeria, ISPON and Director-General, Delta State Innovation Hub, getting the acts right begins with data protection, local software protection and control of own cyberspace.
Uwaje while interacting with Hi-Tech recently, responded to the issue of creating Nigeria’s own social media platforms like China did; which is resonating in the Nigerian ICT sector.
He said: “Social media has become a phenomenal revolution and is now rewriting the socio-continuum and existence of humanity. Today, the social media narrative has become the existential currency for millions of people and has already impacted the fabric of social frameworks and to a large extent, that of governance. The power of social media has now become absolute to the extent that any business, politician or government that neglects it is bound to perish.
“Therefore, it is not only important but strategic for Nigeria and indeed, Africa to establish and own social media platforms. The ultimate goal of social media is reshaping and transferring the real power to the people, as a refined layer of democratic living process.” Although his submission appears farfetched but the framework to achieve the target, considering the dearth of infrastructure in the Information and Communications Technology, ICT, sector.
However, Uwaje has a solution: “Government should begin to gradually build robust ICT infrastructure to accommodate broadband, Internet of Things and 5G Technologies’ development. These are critical and inevitable for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals. “There should also be concerted efforts at building massive ICT capacity and skilled capabilities of Nigerians to engage digital knowledge.
When all these and more are done, we would have leveraged on ICT to redefine knowledge and apply a merit-first models of existence by building a digital trustworthy society. We don’t even need to ask whether there would be results because the Mexican population was able to build support and arrange protests, to change the balance of power and set the record straight, using social media.
Raising the consciousness
Your question is not only thought-provoking but at the core of National security and survivability of the country. We should begin to look at all that; proactive data governance, good legal frameworks and tight cyberspace. We are talking about data, digital information and national security. It involves National and Personal Privacy issues which are no light matters. We must act fast.
Current and future mathematics teaches us that data is and remains the ultimate currency and centre of life, human advancement and survivability. All digital players in the world are searching for data. Nigeria requires and should build a local cloud to house her data. Any nation which allows her critical data to be controlled by outsiders will pay dearly within the context of her sustainable development and may indeed not recover from the trauma. Data of listed public companies belongs to the shareholders – period! So, corporate entities must be made to comply with that principle, because the reusable opportunities of data are far larger than the disclosed revenue at the trading floor.
Numerous evidences abound and vividly illustrate why this is the wisdom roadmap to our collective destiny and prosperity. In my professional assessment, the cumulative potentials of ICT Solutions and services currently developed and supported by Nigerians all over the world is worth over 200billlion USD – including unaccounted patents and IP missing in digital action. Smarter countries have realised that the core interface to ensuring maximum results reside in making ICT key driving force and critical linkage for achieving improved GDP, national security, youth empowerment assurances, global competitiveness and national survivability.”
Source: Vanguard
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