National Information Development Agency (NITDA) with the clear mandate of fostering the development and growth of IT in Nigeria has done everything but meet its mandate since inception.
To say that the agency is a waltzing story of failures and inadequacies is an understatement.
Since its establishment in May 2001, NITDA has operated in fits and starts and abdicated its responsibilities in a country where ICT is growing at an increasing rate.
Perhaps, nothing could have been more damning on the NITDA as a failed agency than the recommendation that it should be scrapped by the Steven Oronsaye 2012 Committee Report on Rationalization and Harmonization of MDAs.
Oronsaye recommended that NITDA should become a department inside the newly created Ministry of Communications Technology and its duty as IT clearinghouse for government to taking over by Galaxy Backbone Plc.
To some extent, NITDA’s careworn state is a direct doppelgänger of past leaderships at the agency since inception.
They all displayed clear lack of focus and understanding of the role of the agency in the present ‘knowledge era’.
Drive and innovation are scare at the agency beyond its perfunctory civil service role.
It is so worrisome that an agency with so much powers from the National Information Technology Development Agency ACT 2007, has failed over the course of 13 years to plan, develop and promote the use of Information technology in Nigeria.
We therefore hope that the appointment of Peter Jack as the new director-general of the agency will reverse this trend.
Jack is touted as possessing the right education and training as well as experience to rejig NITDA.
Reports also said that Jack designed and implemented the Niger Delta Youth Computer Training Program for Niger Delta Development Commission in 2003.
But the real task before Jack is finding the right mix of staff to drive the necessary reforms needed to take Nigeria to the level where countries like India, China and others are.
As a clearing house of ICT projects in Nigeria, he must ensure that the agency’s website is protected from being hacked and debased as was the case recently.
The experience of Nigeria shows that the nation has never been lacking in handing down directives and indeed policies.
What is always absent is the political will to implement, coupled with reckless ranting of government officials who are busy doing nothing.
He must be an action man.
Jack must find the political will to push ICT issues at various tiers of government to make Nigeria competitive and reduce her dependence on imported ICT products and services.