We pay little attention to technology. When we do, it is peanuts and we only get monkeys.
Despite the role of science and technology in the development of countries, Nigeria has remained at the outskirts.
This is the sorry state of technology in Nigeria where the overall ingredients needed to galvanise this important part of sector is in short supply.
Particularly disturbing is the fact that most Nigerian graduates leave institutions of higher learning without even touching a computer, leaving them half baked and without requisite skills to integrate into the ICT driven business environment.
The high cost price of computer hardware and software, apathy and lack of concerted investment in information technology training are some of the reasons why most graduates leave school computer illiterates.
Most school teachers from primary to tertiary also lack the skills to fully utilize technology in curriculum implementation hence the traditional chalk and duster approach still dominates in school pedagogy.
Though, few Nigeria universities already have computer study as part of their academic programmes, most of them are still theoretical in nature to impact meaningfully on the graduates and society.
But the main problem is the absence of holistic plan for technology in the country.
It is so bad that 80per cent of the Nigerian universities and polytechnics, offering Computer Science as a course still include obsolete topics in their curriculum.
The Nigerian Computer Society (NCS) has since condemned the development and called for something urgent to save the system from total collapse.
The way forward is to develop an effective curriculum that includes communications, numeracy, information technology, and social skills units, with specific, specialized teaching of each.
It is also important to attract and retain qualified and experienced IT lecturers as well as build state_of_the_art laboratories.
Government should also heed the suggestion of the NCS that lecturers in Nigeria’s Tertiary institutions be retrained through the assistance of Nigeria IT professionals in the diaspora as IT core training in Nigeria or abroad is very expensive for individual professionals to bear.
