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Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, Festus Keyamo, and Sunday Akin Dare ministerial nominees from Gombe, Delta and Oyo states respectively, affirmed that despite Nigeria’s immense challenges, the country stands a great chance at leapfrogging its economic, ICT and justice systems.
They spoke during their recent screening at the senate as would-be members of the new Federal Executive Council (FEC) expected to be inaugurated next Wednesday, August,7. The FEC is the highest decision making organ at the presidency.
Pantami, the director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), said even though Nigeria currently suffers an investors-scare challenge because the country’s image has been badly portrayed, the country’s huge population, and large number of highly educated young people offer a high potential to turn things around for good with the right policy thrusts on people and technology.
Leveraging on the IT sector could bolster investment by offshore investors which would mean creation of new jobs and impacts across other sectors.
The NITDA’s boss who has earned accolades for repositioning the IT agency as a government IT clearinghouse and promotion of local content said there was need by government to rework the country’s image so as to boost investors’ confidence.
“We have enforced local content policies which have helped in discouraging procurement of foreign IT products except when we cannot produce such goods in Nigeria. We have increased the number of Original Equipment Manufacturers to 265,000 and established IT hubs in 246 institutions across the country,” Pantami told the senate.
Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) said the Nigerian criminal justice system needs to be completely overhaul, magistrates need frequent and routine access to the holding cells in police stations to address, on the spot, the problem of illegal arrest and detention of citizens by police officers.
The Delta state nominee said there was also a need to zonal supreme courts in order to decongest the apex court of frivolous cases and bring justice closer home to the citizens.
For Dare, the Executive Commissioner (Stakeholder Management) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), kidnapping and all forms of technology aided criminalities, will remain a challenge until a proper citizens’ database is put in place. He said the NCC was currently working to ensure only registered SIM cards are used on all networks which would impact on ability of kidnappers to operate.
In addition, he said the telecom regulator has gone far in harmonizing its database with that of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) which has the sole statutory responsibility to manage the National Identity Database (NIDB). All data managed by government’s agencies including the Bank Verification Number (BVN) by the Central Bank of Nigeria are currently being integrated into NIDB which will make common access citizens’ data practicable.
Beginning April this year, the Nigerian Immigration Services (NIS) made it mandatory to have the National Identity Number (NIM) issued by NIMC before any Nigerian can be issued an international passport. What this means is that government is integrating all data on citizens into a single data infrastructure that can be accessible at the click of a button by authorised persons or organisations.
