The federal government has waxed worriedly at the lethargy state governments to the Information and Communications Technology 4 Development (ICT4D) project, the so-called specialized information technology initiative of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) expected to earn some $900 before 2020, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report.
As at last count, only three states: Enugu, Niger and Osun states have indicated their interests to use the ICT4D blue print on how to use IT to drive every sector of the economy in order to achieve the nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
The ICT4D document is aimed at encouraging investment in ICT and it is used as a tool in a wide range of applications and infrastructural planning, fight illiteracy, improve health care delivery, enhance quality of education, boost human capital development, agriculture, national security and law enforcement, governance and the private sector.
Dr. Vincent Olatunji, deputy director, Corporate Services and Research for NITDA, speaking during National IT Forum organized by the Agency at the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) annual conference held in Enugu recently, said that NITDA views an establishment of ICT Agencies in States as the best approach to solve related challenges in those areas.
He said, “We have the national IT Policy, which NITDA is implementing, but what we are trying to do is to drive whatever we have achieved with the national IT policy at the federal level and bring it down to the state level. Over 60 per cent of Nigerians live in the rural area, and our plan is to drive IT policy from the federal level to state level and local government level.”
According to NITDA, building ICT infrastructure by States without relevant agencies on ground is a step in the wrong direction, hence sustaining and inundating of the gestures will become unattainable.
For instance, the slow pace in the implementation of the National IT Policy at the State level forced NITDA, in 2013, to write the 36 States of the federation, informing them of its intention to further drive the IT policy across states and local government.
“We have decided to work with three states for our pilot scheme, Enugu, Osun and Niger States, because they showed interests to collaborate with NITDA in driving the National IT Policy beyond the federal level.
On his part, Pius Bakare, NITDA policy consultant, said that, establishing such agency forms part of strategies States should adopt to get their focus right.
He said, States Government must not shy away from defining their ICT drive as an enabler or as a sector.
Bakare said, “States need to make a basic decision with respect to their ICT policies: do they try to grow their own ICT sector to manufacture and market ICT products; which offers economic benefit that in the long term can be used for social development? Or do they use ICTs to help progress on their development goals (poverty reduction, education, health etc.) in the short term.