We Must Prepare for Post COVID-19 Era – DG NITDA

The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi CCIE, has urged Nigerian technology experts to get ready for new innovations and ideas after the world might have defeated the novel Coronavirus that is currently ravaging our economies.

Kashifu Inuwa, who is also the Chief Information Technology Officer of Nigeria, made this call while appearing as Panelist during Africa Tech Leaders Webinar Series organized by Digital Jewel with the theme: “COVID-19 Pandemic: The Africa Leaders’ Outlook”, recently.

The DG said with all that happened during Corona virus scourge, African countries can still key into technology and digitise its processes. According to him, this will boast the continent’s economy after the Pandemic.

He further noted that Nigeria, through policies and regulations, has already laid a foundation on which digital services can help revive economies that were ravaged by COVID-19 globally. He stressed that digital transformation has positively played a big role during this pandemic in accelerating the trends of digital technologies and how it will also help us to address the changes.

Inuwa mentioned how NITDA, since the outbreak, has come up with different programmes to cushion the effect of COVID-19 especially in Nigeria. He said, the scourge has completely shattered so many planned events and activities across the globe, but that should not be a yardstick for innovators not coming up with new ideas that will help in reviving Nigeria’s economy.

“For me, the promising silver lining in this pandemic is accelerating technology trends and shaping the future of digital economy and digital transformation in general,” the DG said.

He added that “When President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015, he promised to make drastic changes in Nigeria, particularly in the economy sector. The government then set up a committee on Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), which identified ICT as a key enabler”.

“We took digital transformation as a journey, and it started some years back. President Muhammadu Buhari re-designated our Ministry from Communications to Communications and Digital Economy. This is a giant step in achieving our target in transforming Nigeria into digital country”.

“The Federal Executive Council set up a policy that will be cascaded to MDAs and NITDA is issuing regulatory instruments that can help any MDAs to perform its work better. Also, we issued guidelines, standard and framework for government policymakers and other stakeholders to deliver their Technology services efficiently,” he maintained.

While answering question on a recently concluded Nigeria COVID-19 Innovation Challenge, Mallam Abdullahi said the idea was to find a solution to the effect of Coronavirus using technology measures.

“We initiated Nigeria COVID-19 Innovation Challenge that brought innovators together to ideate digital strategy and how to contain the spread of the virus and prepare us for post Covid-19 era. During the opening of the challenge, we received over 1500 applications from different Ministries, Agencies, Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 and Private Sector”, he said.

Answering a question on the rising cost of data and poor network connectivity in Nigeria, Kashifu said it is not within NITDA’s jurisdiction, it is the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) that has the mandate to license telecommunication and internet service providers. However, the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), has been talking about improving the services, especial reviewing the cost, which is a process. NCC is already working on that and I am sure they will engage stakeholders to improve telecomm services.

He further enlightened his audience about the role of NITDA in ensuring adoption, which he made statement about some policies the agency is rolling out; things like Nigerian Enterprise Architecture and Nigerian e-Government Master Plan which are documented to highlight short and long term plan on what NITDA intend to achieve in IT adoption and investment.

“At NITDA, we came up with different initiatives to prepare the way for Digital transformation, among others, we have developed and implemented as follows: Nigeria e-government master plan, Nigeria e-government framework, Nigeria government enterprise architecture, Nigeria cloud computing polices, Digital First initiative and Nigeria smart initiative policy framework. These initiatives helps us all during this Covid-19. They will continue to assist us even after the pandemic”, he argued.

Kashifu Inuwa, however, noted that NITDA has been clearing IT projects from different Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government of Nigeria to ensure quality service is rendered.

He said, “NITDA makes sure all IT projects from MDAs are been cleared by NITDA as stipulated in the law. We check the value for money and local content compliance which aligns with our National e-Government Master Plan. We also did extensive capacity building training for MDAs and citizens in general on how to adopt and embrace digital technology”.