Johnson: Business after the Hype

Her reputation precedes her.
 
Omobola Johnson, minister of Communications Technology is a distinguished Nigerian and former Country Managing Director of Accenture, Nigeria, the first woman to hold that position.
Armed with Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester and a Masters degree in Digital Electronics from King's College, London, she joined Accenture, then Andersen Consulting in 1985.

In about two decades she has been at Accenture, she has progressed through various roles and was a Director and the Head of the Financial Services operating group in Nigeria before her appointment as the Managing Director in December 2004.

She came into the ministry of Communications Technology with an intimidating background and cerebral mind.

The Communications Technology Ministry created in July 2011 is a product of many years of agitation by professionals for a ministry that will be backed by enough political will to cheetah-pole-vault Nigeria into the knowledge age.

To many, Johnson is a square peg in a square hole. And the industry welcomed her with open arms.

She came smoking hot and appeared not daunted by the litany of problems facing the Nigerian ICT industry.

Her initial actions and body language drew applause including the famous four-point agenda.
Under the mandate she unfolded her agenda including; facilitating universal, ubiquitous and cost effective access to communications infrastructure that includes a national fibre optic backbone; promoting the utilization of ICT in all spheres of life to optimize the communications infrastructure.

Others are promoting and facilitating the development of the ICT industry and in so doing, increase the contribution of the ICT industry to the country’s GDP; to deploy information and communications technology to drive transparency in governance as well as improve the quality and cost effectiveness of public service delivery.

Then she began the harmonisation of ICT policies with a committee headed by Prof. Raymond Akwule of the Digital Bridge Institute in Abuja.

This move is expected to check the wasteful duplication of functions and form the pillar for ICT development in the country.

Working with Council of works, the minister has also initiated moves to solve the seemingly intractable problems of “right of way” as all new federal highways and those undergoing repairs will have ducts to transport telecom traffic.

She is also enforcing the use of .ng email domains for all governments Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to give emails and correspondences emanating from them authority and security.

These are tangibles.

She has a long list of “to dos” including pursuant of the local content in the industry; development of national internet-based portal that will facilitate easy access to government information through published and informed websites by December 2014; as well as the national call centre initiative.

But her ministry has performed below the hype that heralded it.

One year down the line, her ministry is still talking and behaving like the typical government bureaucracy with too much distractions of merging MDAs under her ministry.

It is thinking of how to achieve domestic value-added and growth in the ICT industry.

Her ministry has not also led by example as most of their software and hardware are still dominated by foreign brands.

To add salt to injury, the recently released draft ICT policy by her ministry will set the country 20 years backwards because it looked like a job done by carpenters instead of ICT professionals.

Her ministry’s website www.commtech.gov.ng, that is supposed to be a gateway of the industry is headless and provides little or no information, not even the splendid profile of the honourable minister.

It is no longer in contention that the economic development of any nation can only be accelerated by improvements in the country’s ICT infrastructure.

Unless she is saving the best for last, her first one year in office is below par.