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President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Mr. Kashifu Abdallah Inuwa as the new Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). The appointment takes immediate effect according to a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media & Publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu.
Abdullahi’s appointment is part of the approved replacements for heads of federal government agencies that were recently appointed as ministers.
Senator Basheer Garba Mohammed has been appointed Federal Commissioner, National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons. He replaces Sadiya Umar Farouk.
Dr. Chioma Ejikeme has been appointed Executive Secretary, Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, replacing Sharon O. Ikeazor, while Adeleke Moronfolu Adewolu is to replace Sunday Dare as Executive Commissioner (Stakeholder Management) Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). President Buhari has forwarded Adewolu’s name to the Senate for confirmation as replacement for Sunday Akin Dare.
Inuwa i, 39-year-old, takes over from Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, the outgoing director general of the agency who is a minister designate of the Federal Republic.
Until his appointment, Inuwa was a principal officer at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) who was on secondment to NITDA as a Technical Assistant to Pantami.
Profile of the New DG
Born on Feb. 21, 1980,the new boss of NITDA comes to office with over 15 years of experience in IT operations, business transformation and solution architecture, across both private and public sectors. A graduate of Computer Science from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi State, he is the fifth director general of NITDA by the new appointment. Inuwa hails from Hadejia, Jigawa State and he is married with children.
From 2004 to 2013, he worked in Galaxy Backbone and held various positions including IP Network Field Engineer, Senior Network & Lead, IP Operations Team, and Senior Solution Architect & Lead, Technical Solution Design Team.
Inuwa joined the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2014 as a ‘Technology Architect developing Technology Architecture Repository that gives 360 view of the Bank’s IT infrastructure and easy decision on new IT investment. He was part of the team that executed software license rationalization which has increased cost savings for the bank in license annual subscriptions.’
Professional exposure
Inuwa has had extensive exposure in the IT filed including being trained as a Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT Sloan – strategist.He attended Leadership and Management courses at Harvard University in the USA, University of Cambridge in the UK and IMD Business School in Switzerland.
As the 1st Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) in Nigeria’s Public Sector, he is also a certified project manager and solution architect. He also has many professional certifications in networking, telecommunications, service management and solution design in Huawei telecommunications engineering, Cisco design professional, ITIL, and Prince2 among others.
Professional Membership
Inuwa is a member of both British Computer Society (BCS) and Nigeria Computer Society (NCS). He is a recipient of 100 Leading Telecom and ICT Personalities in Nigeria – By Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON).
Works at NITDA
As a technical assistant to the outgoing director general, he coordinated Local Content initiatives that has increased ICT local production by over 200% in 2017.
He also overhauled IT clearance process and encouraged shared services among agencies. This has helped Federal Government saved over 16Bn NGN from IT projects.
To his credit, he oversaw procurement process that has reduced cost of major projects by over 5% in two consecutive annual procurement cycles and he managed project execution that has implemented over 300 IT infrastructure intervention.
