By 
By Oluwatobi Opusunju
Bar Adebayo Shittu
The Minister of Communications, Barr. Adebayo Shittu has reiterated that the government will in no time commence the process of building Knowledge Infrastructure Centres equipped with state-of-art ICT facilities across government secondary schools in Nigeria.
This was disclosed by the Honourable Minister in Abuja over the weekend during the closing ceremony of the National Coding Training and Talent Search for School Children organized by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) in collaboration with National Coding Club.
According to the minister, the Knowledge Centres will have at least 15 computers with good internet facilities. He said every major school in the country would get these facilities to develop the love of computer programming in the teeming young Nigerians.
“These are centres where students can always go to at their spare time to know more about all areas of ICT. This administration is more interested in producing students with good knowledge of ICT,” Shittu said.
Similarly, the Acting Director General of NITDA, Dr Vincent Olatunji said the program, which was targeted at the teeming youths between the ages of 8 and 16, would further promote the use of software development as a means of reversing the enormous capital flight which arises from the importation of software into the country.
“In examining this technology-intensive industry, software development is the component of the industry that is indispensable, yet requires minimal entry barriers and sustainable efforts. The most portent input is knowledge and human capacity, which Nigeria is naturally endowed with”, said Dr Olatunji, who was represented by the Director of Software Outsourcing for NITDA, Dr Chris Okeke.
