What to do with Nigeria?
By Remmy Nweke

There is a lot to do with Nigeria. Apart from given hope to Nigerians as their own country, Nigerians on the other hand owe it a duty to develop their country for the benefit of all and mostly for posterity sake.

This call to duty comes to fore when one looks around to discover there are lots of man-made problems abound even as Nigerians are rated most intelligent amongst its peers in Africa.

Take the case of Philip Emeagwali, a Nigerian computer programing icon based in United States for instance. Apart from using his advantaged environment to lift the name of his fatherland, there are evident that many more Nigerians are intelligent and brilliant like Emeagwali. A critical look into the Nigerian schools surely proves this right.

Limiting this piece to efforts being made by Nigerians in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) world, we are awash with efforts by individuals and corporate bodies to excel in this direction. Being the in-thing nowadays, we may not over-emphasise the relevant of ICT in developing countries' economy. From India, Singapore to Japan and even the USA are known to have made tremendous economic advancement through this phenomenon called ICT, mostly with advent of Internet which had its first turn on this part of the world at the end of last century.

In ICT, Internet seems to be the thing of the moment, but there are other facilities which aids the medium. These include computers, telephones, cables - optical fibres and wireless medium etc.

That the infrastructure maybe insufficient for the growth of this industry, for now, there is hope for Nigeria considering that the quest for knowledge in this direction has been intensified within the last two years; giving birth to such groups as Information Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN), Computer Association of Nigeria and Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) etc.

Moreso, the emergence of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) which has proved that lives of Nigerians could be changed as well as businesses.

With the coming of National IT Policy last April, Nigeria seems to have taken the right step, which must be backed with serious enlightenment campaign based on training of human resources if the federal government's dream of achieving 50,000 IT professionals would be realised by the end of 2003.

By collaboration of NITDA and NIG, the hosting of Nigeria's domain name dot.ng at the headquarters of NITDA in Abuja, massive cut on foreign exchange was recorded.

Well implementation of IT policy by proper funding and monitoring, Nigeria would definitely regain its glory in comity of nations, even as its economy would receive a boost, thereby realising the dream of her founding fathers.

Therefore, if I am asked for now "What to do with Nigeria?" I would suggest we continue to embrace IT as it were, the only way to live life optimally in the world today and that strength lays in unity; for the many we are, the merrier.