Ministry of Defence Pledges Support for Communication Technology Sector

Dr. Bello Mohammed, the Minister of Defence has pledged the ministry’s support for policy initiatives that can help the country benefit from a pool of ICT resources, information, knowledge, intelligence and technologies. He made the pledge in Abuja while delivering a speech as the special of guest of honour at the Defence Sector ICT Forum. The Defence Sector ICT Forum is a Stakeholders Awareness Series (SAS) event hosted by Galaxy Backbone in collaboration with the Defence Headquarters to engender dialogue on how stakeholders in the Defence, Intelligence and Security community can leverage the benefits of Information and Communication Technologies to meet contemporary security challenges. Dr. Mohammed stated that the forum with the theme, "Integrated ICT Framework for the Defence Sector: An Imperative for National Security" could not have come at a better time in the history of our dear country. According to him, “we are at a watershed in the history of our nation. When a nation is at a crossroad, it is time to break barriers and leap to higher grounds. The reason is because every nation is a bundle of talent, intellect and creativity. These inner resources are hardly exploited or harnessed to the full except there are challenges”. He described the current national challenges the country is facing in the area of security as a call for all stakeholders to task themselves to come up with novel solutions that bear testimony to their God-given capacity to meet the challenges of the time. Dr. Mohammed expressed confidence that one of the areas the country should be looking up to is Information and Communications Technologies. According to him, the modern society is a knowledge society driven by intelligence and information, therefore Nigeria's defence and national security sector cannot be different. He stated further that at critical times in the history of nations, national security challenges had given the world some of the best known technologies in the history of mankind. “Ours should not be an exception. It is time for us to begin to exploit new ways of tackling our security challenges”. Mohammed expressed the view that for Nigeria to overcome the present national security challenges all stakeholders must work together to evolve new ways of doing things and build capacity in modern information and communications technologies. He said the forum was very important as it brought stakeholders in defence and information technology together, "so that we can talk to ourselves more closely and explore how we can work together to meet our challenges. The reason is that security, like knowledge, does not only have a military dimension but also a civil one. We need to explore all the dimensions in a manner that assembles all the building blocks from all quarters at the least possible time and cost. Together, we need to examine current technologies that will help us tackle current challenges and institute the best ways not only of acquiring such technologies but also sharing them among the defence and security community".