‘TECHNOLOGY CAN TRANSFORM NIGERIA’ – OLADELE FAYOSI
by Oki Samson
In the face of the immense challenges that Nigeria is faced with, an expert in technology, Mr. Oladele Fayosi has beamed a ray of hope. The ray of hope, he said, is found in information technology.
The IT expert stated that the developmental goals of industrialized countries and blue-chip organizations are attained with the aid of technology. He believes Nigeria and Government can also achieve transformation by technology. He added: ‘Fortunately, we are in Lagos and Lagos is one of the state that has laid the kind of foundation that you can build on looking at the smart city, looking at security, and looking at development goals that will impact people. During the census, Lagos practically captured its data, which is a separate database different from the national database to at least get something better about the people that living in Lagos. I see that as a level ground for us to build on and that is what we can see in the second level of development that is already going on in the smart city project.’
He further stated: ‘What is smart city? Smart city is looks at how you can exploit technology to optimize and improve on various areas of the city. The reason why we may have challenges as a country is that we are still scratching the surface as a country. So many states have not even started, so Lagos is a little ahead and each of the state also need to move in that direction to improve on how we use technology to dolve the 21st centuarty gaivenment.’ He identified some technical problems such as the filling of forms in many agencies but nobody is putting them together to have a complete database, even from the airports, you fill so many forms and the data is somewhere, but we are not really leveraging on the data or the internet because they are not electronic yet. He appreciated the National Bureau of Statistics on what it is doing in terms of use of information it has gathered from many clients. He called out to Lagos state to coordinate its data gathering so as to be able to make best use of it in the fields of education, security, agriculture and others.
On politics and youths involvement in politics, the leader of the Enterprise Service team of Microsoft believes young Nigerians are gradually taking leadership positions. ‘On leadership position, I think we are already there. If we look at the Senate and House of Representative today, we can see a couple of young people and those of
average age in those positions and also in gubernatorial position. I will say we are already there but how well can we really impact will be my question. We really need to impact a lot more, for instance, you have a portfolio to run even as a senator, you have probably a committee or an aspect of the economy to run then you as a young person need to bring your experience either from the corporate world or public sector, and as well run those units or departments with excellence.
That is what I think we should focus on.’ ‘In terms of strategy, what are we set out to do as a country? For
instance, in Nigeria today we don’t even know ourselves, we don’t even have our data, and that is why we are having security challenges. We do not even have our identity, we cannot possibly say that this person is such and such person, this is what he does. If I don’t tell you where I live you won’t know, even if you have some of my ID because you cannot track it anywhere and that is why we have security challenges. Some of the activities going on, we should be able to trace it down to who and what.’
‘What level of power do the young people or energetic or more vibrant people have to execute on the assignments that is what I think the challenges are right now. Or to put it better, if young people are in
some positions, I am not really convinced that they are in strategic positions. It is not so much about youth involvement but youth impact. In the past general election, we have so many people that are young
but Nigerians look at them and do not rate them well because they are perceived to have disappointed. Nigerians are even afraid because people who have been there in the past three years who they thought were going to make a change have not done so. Thus, what is the assurance that the young will do better than the old or middle age?’ he concluded.
