ICT University  officially takes off first quarter 2017

The Federal Government has assured  that its proposed University of ICT will officially take off by the first quarter of 2017, which is expected to build capacity of ICT professionals, while enhancing digital literacy in the versatile areas of ICT.

Adebayo Shittu, the Minister of Communications Technology made the disclosure over the weekend at the 1st Annual Workshop of the Nigeria Computer Society,(NCS), Abuja chapter which has the theme: ‘The role of ICT in taking Nigeria out of economic recession’

Shittu while giving an insight into what the University wants to address  said, “I don’t want to indict any faculty of departments of ICT ,but from the reports we hear from the fields, Nigeria as at now, does not have the requisite skills and hands on trained manpower for the ICT Industry.

He said, “When we say the ICT Industry in Nigeria is a versatile and diversified field that would engage all the big names in the ICT  in the world, such as Micro-soft, Motorola, Erickson, all of them have to be part of the formulation and management of the University”

Shittu said, “We are looking at a situation whereby that University will be  Public private Partnership,(PPP),while looking at how the big names will contribute to formulating the syllabuses. We are also looking at the situation whereby the six campuses in the ICT University would  specialise in specific fields of ICT”

“It is not going to be any type of University, but specialised to take care of the ICT Industry not only in Nigeria but all over Africa” he added.

Meanwhile, the President of the Nigeria Computer Society,(NCS),Abuja chapter at the event  said the organisation is working towards building local capacity of members in order to address exports of jobs which Nigeria spends billions of naira on.

“We must accept there is a problem, and that there is a recession, and we must create solutions. The workshop is focused on building local capacity to solve local problems and challenges”

According to him, “There are lots of ICT guys in the country, and we must make use of them and rather than exporting those talents, and skills, we must harness it and encourage local production”

He said, “We are looking at the hardware and the software sector. From the software sector ,Nigeria could make billions of naira. If ICT is contributing almost 11 percent to the National GDP, it tells you that we could make billions of dollars from ICT alone”

On how government could encourage local capacity, he said, “From TSA, government is blocking certain loopholes in the government expenditure. It equally means that if the government could create opportunities for people to come in, we would benefit a lot from the sector. We have policies already to drive local content, government must encourage those playing in that value chain, and not only using Galaxy to do most of its works,” he said.

He further suggested to the National Information Technology Development Agency,(NITDA), to work with the National Universities Commission  towards reviewing the curriculum of the computer science students in the country, which would build and develop the local capacity to do most of the jobs that are often given to other companies.

Meanwhile, analysts has argued that  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. They, therefore, insist that  international manufacturers must  domesticate their products in order to achieve a win-win relationship and provide jobs for Nigerians in the value chain.

Also,BusinessDay findings noted that  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.

To this, the Minister insist that the ICT University through a Public Private Partnership,(PPP) model would build indigenous capacity of Nigerians to perform outsourcing in most of the areas that Nigerians spend huge money on importation.