Professor Charles Uwadia is president, Nigerian Computer Society and director, Centre for Information technology and Systems, University of Lagos.
He has been a visiting Fellow to Universities and Institutions in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Italy and Australia.
Uwadia recently delved into the networking, congestion control and management aspects of information technology and has over 30 publications in both local and international journals with three books to his name.
A renowned expert, he spoke to Chike Onwuegbuchi on a wide range of issues.
Curriculum and Computer Education
Curriculum review especially in the university and polytechnic is normally handled by two bodies. For the university, you have the National University Commission (NUC), that is the regulatory body and for the polytechnic and college of technology, you have the National Board of Technical Education. Those two bodies are government agents and are charged with ensuring minimum academic standards for the universities and polytechnics. Of course, within that framework we still have to examine that of the university; we have the senate of the university. The senate of the university is in charge of academic matters and the curriculum falls within that same purview. So, you would expect that the senate of the university is entrusted with the relevance of the curriculum for the programmes. That is the structure. Now coming to the Nigerian Computer Society (NCS), the NCS in partnership with Computer Professionals Registration of Nigeria (CPN) is interested in the quality of graduates that we produce for the industry. So, we also have a role to play in the curriculum. While the NUC and the NBTE would be looking at the curriculum from the academic point of view, the NCS and the CPN would be looking at the curriculum from the professional point of view. Then, you have accreditation. We already have the guidelines for the accreditation of institutions. These guidelines are being circulated to the institutions. We also have our own minimal standards for professional practice. This is also circulated to institutions. I think what is lacking for now is the political will; the wherewithal to be able to apply sanctions on institutions that fail to meet these minimum requirements. The NUC has already started doing that, 10 universities lost their accreditation; I’m not going to mention names here. In second generation universities, computer science/computer technology was instantly denied accreditation. What that means is that that institution is not supposed to admit students into that programme. What it implies is that university is deficient in that area. The curriculum is not the only criterion, we have other criteria but that is the core area. So to the question, we have school curriculum review regularly, at the NUC level, NBTE, CPN and NCS levels. It is then the duty of these institutions to ensure that there is conformity to the curriculum. What you notice is that it goes beyond just designing and reviewing the curriculum. When you review the curriculum, you also need capacity to be able to implement the curriculum. Implementation requires training of teachers to enable them teach subjects in new areas; to be able to adapt rapidly to new paradigms in programming. Newer technologies are coming up, teachers also need to be carried along and somebody must provide that. We need to equip the labs as new platforms are needed to teach new technologies. It then takes us back to the issue of funding. We would require funds to implement curriculum review. One of the areas of implementing curriculum review is to go into some kind of partnership with institutions abroad where you can source capacity building.
Proposed ICT Ministry
I think it will go a long way. At least, it will be better than where we are coming from. It is not the ultimate. The ultimate which is practically what we asked for, which is found in some countries that place IT at a high pedestal is to have a Ministry of Information Technology. That is actually what we demanded for. But the proposed ministry is the ministry of IT and Communication which is not a bad idea because of the convergence between computing and telecoms. So, it is not a bad idea because in that ministry you have agencies and commissions that can work together; NITDA, NCC, CPN. The Ministry of Information will just remain an organ for the propagation of government’s information. The proposed ministry of IT and Communications will be a more focused ministry than the structure we have now. That is our expectation.
Patronage of Locally Made Software
Well, yes we can assist in monitoring the patronage of locally made software. We have actually asked our member companies to be on alert and monitor software so we can engage graduates. You see, having a policy is one matter and implementing it is another matter. What you actually find is that some of the agencies do not even know about the quality of these softwares. We see adverts that were put out requesting for some quantities of locally produced software. When we see such adverts, what we do is to get in touch with the ministry or agency, show them a copy of the publication and usually, they find them attractive. Having said that, what could be disturbing would be a situation whereby ministries or agencies that are aware still go abroad and source software that have equivalents here in the local market. When we get that of course, we take it up; we have one or two cases that we are currently pursuing. I’m not saying that the government has been supportive because when this comes to our attention, all we do is to bring it to the attention of the Head of Service and it can be taken up from there.
Certification of Local Software
You should note that the private sector is at liberty to source for software from any outlet as government policies may not affect them much. We should not talk about the issue of quality and standards because some of our software meet international standard and yet, they are not patronized. It is not just the issue of quality and standard. Don’t forget that some of these companies we talked about, their interests lie outside the country, so they are not under any obligation to patronize made in Nigeria software even when these software have been proven to the world. If you have a bank that has a chairman from the U.S, he might just decide to source for software from there. There are quite a number of undertones when it comes to sourcing for software. We all know why in some situations people source for them abroad even they are here. I think we need to continue to sensitize people and make the industry aware of software that are available here and their quality. We continue to engage our local producers; nobody is asking for anything less than the international standard. Nobody is talking about the Nigerian standard-we are in the global market now thus, local software developers need to be given a chance; they need all the encouragement to continue to be in the industry. Don’t forget that the more patronage you have, the more you are encouraged. Even the cheaper the software becomes eventually and you would be able to attain the level of big developers. We are not saying that quality or standards should be compromised, we continue to encourage our members to do things to global standards.
NCS and Exhibition of Local Software
We actually have these fora and we need to project our local developers more. The developers’ club summit sponsored by Microsoft brings developers together but only those using Microsoft tools to develop. That Microsoft is sponsoring does not necessarily mean that the outcome of such a venture is not local; the software summit sponsored by Microsoft brings together local developers and maybe others too, who use Microsoft development platform. What we are trying to do in the coming year is to see if we can get companies that support other platforms too. We are already talking to Oracle, Linux Group and others so that they can also organize fora on alternative development platforms and not just Microsoft platform. Besides that, we also have a software exhibition forum. Unfortunately, we could not hold that last year due to some hiccups but we are planning on this year as from August. We are already working on it; a committee is looking into that and that will bring exhibitors of various backgrounds together, to showcase what they have to the rest of the world. That will be termed ‘Nigeria Software Exhibition’. Note that the Information Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN) also organizes fora and exhibitions for hardware products. I think one of the things you would love to see is something of a big magnitude that will bring software, hardware together-an all inclusive exhibition of Nigerian initiative. We are working on that.
Formulation of IT Policy
The situation now is that the draft policy has been submitted precisely two Fridays ago. It is still a draft; I guess it still has some way to go. You see, when you talk about the process; making it an all inclusive thing, getting people involved, you still find out that people don’t react to certain things. The stakeholders’ fora in Abuja and Lagos were advertised and opportunities were given to people to make their inputs, pass their comments and I am certain that they did. I participated and know how it went; some people were aggrieved no doubt. Having said that, we advised NITDA to please take a step further and send the document to the ministries and the agencies, so that no one claims ignorance. IT policy is a very important document and should not be one mulled in any form of controversy. As it is, I believe people can still make inputs. It is not yet in form of a bill going to the National Assembly.