Poverty has also on its part really posed a great danger to Nigeria’s tech value. The individuals who have the zeal and ability to invest in their expertise might end up being frustrated, due to lack of capital.
This is why the country’s GDP per capita has to be fixed or elevated if she actually wants her tech sector to excel headlong. There are absolutely no two ways about it.
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Nigerians do not trust made-in-Nigeria goods. The mentality of seeing foreign products as superior while branding domestically-made ones inferior, must be tackled. Aside from sensitization, apt policies can properly assist in eradicating the social menace, which could best be described as a cankerworm that has eaten deep into our collective bone marrow.
The governments must not necessarily invest in technology for their respective tech values to grow. In most countries where technology is seriously thriving, the individuals domiciled therein remain the key players, not the government. But such a phenomenon can never be witnessed if the enabling environment is conspicuously missing.
To fix this anomaly, we must be ready and determined to address the quagmire in the political system. The country’s political instability is so intense, and continues to skyrocket by the day, that one cannot possibly say what the nearest future entails for our indigenous tech patent.
The policies are so weak that they can’t even initiate a project, let alone accomplish it. To get things rightly done, we need to acknowledge that a country’s growth in any sector depends majorly, if not solely, on her extant policies.
To be on the same page with me, take a look at any nation that has grown in a certain sector, and then take time to painstakingly x-ray the policies guiding the area in question. Just a research and adequate analysis would make you understand where exactly I’m coming from.
Growth is not rocket science; it takes some processes. For such processes or procedures to occur, there must be existing principles. The moment the rules (principles) are thwarted, it marks the beginning of the end of the procedures. There are no two ways about it.
Lest I forget, we need to equally take into cognizance that the reason most of the needed policies cannot exist in countries like Nigeria is that our corrupt political leaders have realized that technology exposes corruption. Read my lips.
They are apparently of the view that if tech is deployed in any area, it would certainly expose their corrupt practices. Take for instance, a situation where technology is fully implemented in the country’s electoral system as well as using forensic audit patterns in the finance sector.
The above factors are the reason we ought to clamour for overhaul. The country is in damn need of total overhaul of the system. To achieve this, we need to realize the full benefits of investing in technology.
We are not here to reiterate the numerous merits of technology but to point out the goals and lapses in the said sector, in a bid to do the needful. If we spend time to highlight the outpouring merits, three editions of this column might not be sufficient.
Artificial intelligence is deeply gaining momentum on a daily basis, signifying it has come to stay. Ease of access to information cannot be overestimated. Ease of mobility is another overwhelming experience. Better communication means and improved banking have, beyond reasonable doubts, made the world seem not unlike a minute village.
Learning has been digitalized, thereby silencing any form of impediment, owing to the presence of technology. Cost efficiency and apt time management are being assured in all tech-driven activities. These are verifiable facts.
Countless innovations are springing up by the day in every facet of human endeavour. The ‘disabled’ are now abled, because of tech-driven tools, yet we seemingly await more prophets to tell us that technology has come to take us to the promised-land.
Understanding that the presence of an adequate tech hub drastically changes the economic outlook of any country involved, is enough reason to place its content ahead of others.
In view of this, it’s high time the Nigerian society looks inwards with a view to strengthening her tech worth for development’s sake.