Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that with global advancement in Technology,Nigeria’s dependence on oil cannot continue, even as Nigeria is projected to expend about $143.8 billion on ICT by 2019,if international manufacturers did not domesticate their operations in Nigeria.
The Vice President who spoke at the 9th edition of the e-Nigeria summit on Tuesday in Abuja said the invention of the innovation of Information Technology has certainly changed everything,while advancing virtually all forms of socio-economic transactions.
According to the Vice President, digital technology has created a situation where whether we like it or not diversification will be forced upon us,adding that our dependence on oil for example, simply cannot continue whether we like it or not”
Speaking on while Nigeria should depend less on oil,he said: “As the years go by, oil is becoming less and less important. Cars are some of the largest users of petrol. But technology is changing all of that and if you look at what is happening today, the birth of the electric car, with all what have gone into the technology, just shows us that, whether we like it or not, we may not be depending on oil for much longer”
Last year, Electric Vehicles or EVs as they are called grew by 60%. Japan has more electric car charge points than petrol stations. Both Japan and China are aggressively investing and encouraging the use of Electric cars and both offer subsidies to buyers of Electric cars”The Vice President said.
Fairly conservative analysis indicate that by 2040, long-range electric cars will cost less than $22,000, according to the projections and thirty-five percent of new cars worldwide will be electric cars”
Bloomberg estimates also shows that electric vehicles could displace oil demand of 2 million barrels a day as early as 2023. Now, that would be equivalent to what created the glut of oil, to what triggered the 2014 oil crisis. How about self-driving cars? Technology can now produce self-driving cars; Toyota, Mercedes for example. And all of those are very quickly expanding in operation, there are now self-parking, and of course cruise control”
Meanwhile, Isa Ibrahim the director general of National Information Technology Agency ,(NITDA)at the summit stated that Nigeria loses $2.8 billion annually from the importation of ICT goods and services, including a whopping $1 billion spent annually on software imports.
He then appealed to international manufacturers to domesticate their products in Nigeria in order to achieve a win-win relationship, pointing out that locally assembled computers account for less than 8 per cent of all the computers used in the country.
‘‘Nigeria is projected to expend about $143.8 billion on ICT by 2019- a vast sum that translates to over 7 times the value of the 2016 national budget! We strongly plead with our international manufacturers to domesticate their products in order to achieve a win-win relationship.
‘‘Similarly, Nigeria loses approximately $2.8 billion annually from the importation of ICT goods and services, including a whopping $1 billion spent annually on software imports.
Locally manufactured or assembled computers represent less than 8% of all the computers used in the country,’’ he said.
The NITDA boss said the theme of the programme, Leveraging ICT Innovation for Economic Diversification, was deliberately chosen to align with the Federal Government’s drive to diversify the economy as a measure to check the present economic recession.
According to him, the diversification of the economy has become imperative in the face of dwindling revenue from the oil sector, saying that ICT provides a veritable option for economic diversification because it has the added advantage of being able to improve efficiency and enhance productivity in all the other sectors of the economy.
Within the limits of the mandate that set up NITDA, he said that the agency under his leadership will be repositioned to filter the IT gadgets being imported to the country in the overall interest of the nation.
‘‘We want to transform NITDA from its administrative outlook to IT-driven and knowledge-based agency, and we request the support of all to materialize this aspiration.
‘‘We are fortunate to have a large percentage of young Nigerians that have a high level of interest in ICTs. We are creating an environment that supports high level ICT-based capacity building for them.
This will create the critical mass required to drive the Local Content programme of the Federal Government, championed by NITDA.
‘‘There is tremendous gain to be made from a Local Content Policy that encourages the development of local ICT products and services. Among other things, it will significantly reduce capital flight,’’ he said.
