Nigeria urged to embrace digitalisation in service industry

The Nigerian government has been urged to embrace digitalisation in service, especially in the financial, information and audit ecosystem.

“If our country, especially those in charge of governance, adopt full digitalisation in all the processes – which is about the people, process and technology – it will be a paradigm shift from the past,” Godson Iroh, managing partner, Iroh Godson & Co, stated during the hybrid 14th annual conference of the Information Systems and Audit Control Association (ISACA), held recently in Abuja.

Speaking on the theme, ‘digital innovation and the future of work: implications for community, industry and governance’, Iroh stated that digitalisation is the way to go. According to him, there are possible risks associated with digitisation like personal influence; however, individuals changing things at their will would be reduced drastically.

“We are encouraging that whether it is the private sector or government, everyone should key into it because IT has brought the world into a global village. And ISACA is taking the lead to ensure that everybody is taking the loop into the digital world,” Iroh stated.

On the contribution of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) tax pro max, Iroh stated that it has changed the face of tax practice for the administrator, taxpayer and practitioners. “Once the government cycles and all the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) adopt digitalisation and start operating the digital ecosystem, it will help a lot in reducing manual participation,” he stated.

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Ikani Yunusa, the senior manager/head, financial reporting unit, FIRS, stated that information technology (IT) experts were thinking of applications that would result in a significant positive impact on the lives of the people, the country, and those driving it.

“Nigeria is not lagging in digital transformation. Nigeria is making progress. Take an instance in the area of personal data management. We have the law proposed by NITDA and passed into law by the National Assembly that regulates how personal data are collected, used, stored, transmitted and managed which gives Nigeria an edge and a level of comfort for our external stakeholders and business entities to believe in our system,” he stated.

Also speaking, Taofeek Babayeju, CEO at iCentra, said data was the hallmark of the present dispensation. According to him, the essence of digital transformation and digital innovation in the digital age is to imagine the customer experience.

“The way the world is going right now, big corporations and even small organisations are using data to predict the behaviour of their clients and take decisions within the association; organisations are doing this so they can make informed decisions,” Babayeju stated.