ICT: Missing Key in 2015 Elections

Election fever is sweeping across the country but the aspirants are not talking about how to use information and communications technology (ICT) to underpin Nigeria’s regeneration, proffering instead to focus on the same political gimmicks that now sound like broken records.

The politicians seemingly unconcerned have continued to marshal out their governance agenda and leadership qualities and occasionally slinging mud at rivals.

Most of the aspirants have however launched high tech campaign strategies to woo voters and sell their candidatures but have not said a word about how to tackle the menace of internet scams that have earned the country notoriety as a fraud haven.

That lack of attention to details can wreck some of the aspirants’ political campaigns particularly now that Nigerians are tired of their oratory and undelivered promises in the past.

Advisers of political office seekers should remind their bosses that ICT offers huge businesses, waiting for Nigerian IT professionals to leverage on.

Nigerians expect aspirants to be talking about how to make broadband internet, the life wire of development.

Broadband is already a basic right in some countries but has remained largely under developed in Nigeria, because of the unseriousness of successive governments.

Elsewhere, taxation on ICT is hurting fresh investment in the only thriving sector and no aspirant has said anything about how to address the indiscriminate quest for internally generated revenue from the telecoms industry by all tiers of government.

As a matter of fact, no modern economy can exist without fundamental ICT infrastructure because these are the tool for national and economic development.

Examples are India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Ghana where the governments have deliberately orchestrated chains of events that culminated in making their countries the pillars of ICT in the world.

These governments recognize that embracing ICT will result in improved transparency, speedy information dissemination, higher administrative efficiency and improved public service sectors including: transportation, education, health, water, peace and security.

Nigeria with its wealth of human capital and natural resources has even better potentials but the attention of the politicians is elsewhere. They are inclined to putting square peg in a round hole.

Having tried every known economic trick to steady the economy without any success; ICT remains the only key to redirecting the economy.