IT stability under threat as illegal practice dominates sector

Stability of Nigeria’s Information Technology (IT) sector is being questioned as Nigeria has been referred to as the home for illegal practice of IT.

This is due to the over one hundred thousand IT practitioners and only less than one thousand registered and financially up to date computer professionals in the country.

Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN) is a body under the Ministry of Education charged with the control and supervision of the computing profession in the country. The Council is primarily charged with responsibility for building-up local IT capacity as well as the regulation of IT practice in Nigeria.

As the regulatory authority in IT education and practice in Nigeria, the Council’s mandate is to provide a regulated and standard-driven environment for IT education and practice in Nigeria such that socio-economic development is engendered.

Vincent Asor, president/chairman in Council of the CPN, said the IT sector was currently being infiltrated by quacks that practice the profession without registering with the appropriate council, thereby cheating the government and reducing standards of practice.

“The CPN act is very clear that if you do not register then you cannot practice and if you do, you will go to jail or pay a fine or both. But today everybody looks on because the information technology space is now open to everyone.

“Everybody wants to practice information technology of which most of us in the profession are very excited about, everybody says ICT is the new enabler but how would the sector generate funds when people are cheating the government by not registering and paying registration dues,” he said.

Analysts say, like every other sector, if the IT sector is not well regulated and monitored, it will reduce the quality of IT practice in the country and threaten the growth and stability of the sector.

“We will only have sanity in the IT profession, the issue of cyber crime and cyber security will reduce and furthermore, we will be able to raise funds for the government if people register before just setting up any office and practicing anyhow they like without having a code of conduct governing their practice,” Asor said.

According to Asor, the council can support government on a yearly basis with about N4.5 billion naira through registering IT practitioners.

“Our council is the cheapest of them all, we charge less than N10,000 so if we have 100,000 people paying N10,000 annually, the council will raise N1 billion per annum just for individuals.

“We have a minimum of about 20,000 corporate IT practicing organisations operating in this country today. The cheapest we charge per annum is N150, 000 and if you multiply that amount by 20,000 corporate bodies, that gives N3billion and by the time you add those figures, we can comfortable raise about 4 or 5 billion naira for government annually,” Asor said.

Muyiwa Ogungboye, CEO of e.Stream networks, told BusinessDay in a telephone interview that the problem starts with the government and not the CPN.

“How many bodies does the government want us IT practitioners to join and how many levies would we have to pay? We are already part of ATCON and other bodies and we have to pay ISPAN levy, NCC levy, software levy, hardware levy and others.

“If the government can tell us that these are the compulsory ones that we need to register and there is only one or two main bodies then we will definitely register, but there are just too many bodies,” he said.

Adesina Sodiya, vice chairman of Council, CPN, said: “Over time, we have tried to persuade people to register but we believe now that we have done enough sensitisation and awareness generation and now it is time for enforcement.”

The act establishing this council says that before any individual or organisation can practice IT in this country, it has to register with the profession.