By MKPE ABANG
With renewed vigour motivated by a sharpened, more focused and committed support from its supervising Minister of Communications, Nigeria’s Information Technology development agency, under a new leadership, launches out with the greatest fervour ever on the journey to change Nigeria’s dependency on oil to knowledge.
Between Knowledge and a Depleting Resource
Oloibiri is a very important signpost in Nigeria’s socio-economic development, but only so far as being the community where oil was first struck in commercial quantity on Sunday, January 15, 1956, by then Shell Darcy. Did you just say that is some 60 odd years ago? Yes, it is indeed!
However, Oloibiri has, sadly, remained just that: a signpost, a memento, a mere reference point – although Nigeria has made tremendous ‘progress’ with oil since it was first discovered 60 years ago in that rural community. Those who have had the fortune of paying a visit to the Oloibiri community in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State speak of abject poverty and absence of any sign of modernity; worse still that the very first oil well to be struck in West Africa has dried up! That leaves Oloibiri even more dejected; with little if any attention by the Nigerian government.
Contrast this with the streets of London, which have been shining since the British Empire rose to its zenith having originated with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its zenith, the British Empire was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power.
By 1922 the British Empire exerted considerable influence over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population at the time, and covered more than 13,000,000 square miles (33,670,000 km2), almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area.
As a result, its political, legal, linguistic and cultural legacy remains so widespread till today most of the former and liberated colonies are either influenced by the British through language or social systems. At the peak of its power, the phrase “the empire on which the sun never sets” was often used to describe the British Empire, because its expanse around the globe meant that the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.
Why did the British Empire exert so much influence over such a wide landmass and population? Knowledge surely played a key role, for even in conquests at battles, knowledge is at the forefront.
How come that the indigenous people of Oloibiri and their kith and kin in Nigeria looked the other way while the British of Shell Darcy dug black gold in their backyard? The latter had knowledge; the former had the depleting resource but lacked knowledge of its existence, its use let alone how to exploit it.
It is much the same way that long after the agrarian revolution, agricultural produce and crops from Africa are still being taken to the Western world mostly as raw materials; are refined and shipped back to Africa as finished goods, which are in turn sold at prices a thousand times the price of the agricultural produce taken. It is the battle between knowledge and depleting resources.
Today, Nigeria stands, not on the threshold, but in the middle of another revolution: the knowledge revolution. Driven by Information and Communications Technologies, this revolution is like no other: the opportunities are available to all; seize them and be in it for good, for life; or lose out completely.
On April 18, 2001 the then Administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo took one momentous step, by establishing the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). Coming at a time so little was happening in the ICT space in the country not many outside the immediate stakeholders or those schooled in the sector readily appreciated the importance of the agency just created.
It was essentially created to co-ordinate general IT development in the country. But its mandate, when finally spelt out, became well spread and so expanded that gradually the eyes of many began to see beyond the surface. Still, it would be some time before the real importance and significance of this Agency dawned on a good majority especially of decision makers.
And, thanks to the National Information Technology Development Act of 2007, the agency got more than a passing charge to its assignments: it was mandated by that Act, to ‘create a framework for the planning, research, development, standardisation, application, coordination, monitoring, evaluation and regulation of Information Technology practices, activities and systems in Nigeria.”
Fifteen years on, and we are about to see NITDA in its full glory, taking Nigeria practically by the hand from a generation of reliance on a depleting resource to experience and play actively in the knowledge era; it is the new gold rush, yet everyone can be accommodated.