Nigeria Needs More iDEA Centers-Adoke

Rock Adoke, a software developer and cyber security analyst, has urged the Federal Government to establish more incubation hubs on the platform of Information Technology Developers Entrepreneurship Accelerator (iDEA),  to fire the kiln of the economy.

Adoke who spoke to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek in Lagos said that it was pitiable that the poor level of research and development in the country has created room for foreign solutions.

Adoke while commending the ministry of Communications Technology for launching iDEA, noted that, “Apparently, private businesses are the primary drivers of any IT  sector. At the government level, I must commend the efforts of the Minister of Communication Technology in her role of creating iDEA platform for the Nigerian software developers to come together and create robust enterprise grade applications that will address oil and gas, financial services needs, as such platforms brings ideas to Life and showcases the ingenuity of Nigeria talents in IT industry.

“When youths get to see more of these on the dailies, people become more aware of the values information technology brings and it goes a long way to encourage our local contents in other to promote local skills. For instance, India, actually has carved a niche for itself in the software world as the country with the best minds in I.T. services, when you go to China it is a different ball-game, rather than focus on manufacturing alone, the Chinese has successfully produced the next cyber security ‘armies’- ethical hackers.

“In recent past, there was news that Chinese government trains hundreds hackers every year. People neglected the news with a wave of hand; Now, the world can seen the ripple effect, as Chinese have successfully produced a new breed of cyber armies capable of executing catastrophic remote attacks on foreign intelligence systems. If you observe the issue between China-US cyber-war squabble, it all started like a flash. Who are the Chinese? Do they know how to write computer code in English?

“But these are people who had a vision, projected into the future that the internet will become a vital enabler for any government to survive or make impact, globally. They invested on it. Today, they have one of the most offensive cyber youths in the world. Everybody sees America as the best in I.T., how come they (USA) could not detect that their chamber of commerce was hacked for a space of six months by Chinese”.

He added that “At such sensitive level, America’s chamber of commerce is where you have patents of products, classified information, companies product lines and specifications, the prototypes, the safety data sheets, how come they could not detect it was compromised for six months. That tells you how far the Chinese has gone in perfecting their breeds of cyber security”.

He therefore called for the extension of the iDEA centres to other parties of the country to create avenue for the youths to be meaningfully engaged, particularly in tackling Nigeria’s numerous IT challenges.