IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr Boss Mustapha, on Monday said the National Identity Card Management Commission (NIMC) has registered 37 million Nigerians.

The SGF spoke in Abuja at the maiden National Identity Day with the theme: Assured Digital Identity for All.

The NITPPF is the premier event where IT public sector administrators, professionals, business leaders, high level public officials and opinion leaders from all parts of Nigeria come together to share and build a vision of a connected knowledge base with access for all.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Google Global Services Nigeria have forged an alliance toward the actualisation of national targets for ubiquitous broadband access in furtherance of Nigeria’s digital transformation policy.

The two organisations made the commitment when a delegation from Google Global Services Nigeria paid a courtesy visit to the commission’s head office in Abuja recently to deliberate on viable collaborative interventions to propel digital transformation across the country and Africa.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said its current push to deepen Internet penetration would help the country achieve seamless e-governance. With 122.9 million active Internet subscriptions as at August, the commission said the government is now poised to take its services to online, bearing in mind that the citizens are also online.

Electronic governance or e-governance is the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchange of information, communication transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems and services between government- to-citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B) government-to-government (G2G), government- to-employees (G2E) as well as back-office processes and interactions within the entire government framework. The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who stated this at an e-government forum held in Lagos, said Internet connection is at the heart of e-governance in any country.

Efforts to deepen digital growth in Nigeria will not yield positive result until the rural areas in the country are digitally connected, President of Nigeria Computer Society, Prof. Sola Aderounmu has said. This came with the realisation that the digital gap between the urban and rural communities in the country is getting wider, as investments in digital infrastructure are being concentrated in cities.

While pointing at e-government, e-health and e-education as the next frontiers for Nigeria in the digital journey, Aderounmu said the rural communities would cut off from these developments if there were no conscious effort to deploy infrastructure in remote areas.

Adewunmi, who stated this at his inaugural address recently, thanked the 17th National Executive Council led by the immediate past president, Sir Demola Aladekomo, for the work done within the space of two years.

The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has launched a call for proposals from the country’s academics with the aim of developing solutions in areas including smart cities as well as identity management and location tracking systems using the national identification number (NIN).

One of the areas of the research is the development of sensors which can be used for smart city applications such as traffic management systems, smart parking, smart grid, smart homes, smart institutions, smart public services, public safety and emergency response and smart network management.

With a national target of reaching 70% broadband usage by 2025, Nigeria has made great strides, with broadband usage increasing to 44.5% in July 2022.

According to Naveed Kashif, Head of the Southern Africa Market at Nokia, optical solutions that have the scale to allow for significant growth will enable the country to meet its aggressive connectivity targets.

According to computer professionals, who gathered in Enugu under the aegis of Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) for the 25th edition of the yearly conference with the theme:"Building a Knowledge Based Economy in Nigeria: The Role of Information Technology", both corporate and individuals should device new ways of protecting data, since the country is fast moving to a knowledge-based economy.

Contrary to reports in some online media that the national identity card would replace voters register in 2019, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has clarified that the report was misconstrued and out of context.

According to a statement issued by the Head of Corporate Communications Unit of NIMC, Mr. Loveday Chika Ogbonna, the report emanated from a visit to a royal father in Delta State where the commission's Delta State Coordinator explained the possibility of harmonising all identity related data on one card, an issue which was wrongly reported.

Q: AS an ICT expert, how relevant is ICT to mainstream education in Nigeria?

This is really a pertinent question you often get from teaching professionals who worry that the provision of computers and other types of technology to schools is being confused with proper education. Basically, ICT is very relevant in that it supports and enhances, but does not replace traditional methods of teaching. E-learning, which is broadly speaking the delivery of education via IT systems, is becoming increasingly fundamental to the way educators interact with students all over the world. A good example is the Glow system in Scotland which links all the schools in the country over the intranet. During severe weather, a few years ago in the winter, when school closure lasted a week, teachers were still able to communicate with pupils via the intranet to keep school work going on.

For Nigeria to achieve her digital economy agenda, there is need to invest in effective and efficient digital infrastructure, particularly edge cloud technologies, which offer cost savings, capacity to scale rapidly, advance cyber-security features and access to powerful analytical tools for processing big data.

The Director of Operations, Unitellas Edge Cloud, a provider of enterprise-grade edge cloud and IT infrastructure as a service, Blessing Omo, made this known at this year’s edition of the Information Communication Technology and Telecommunication (ICTEL) EXPO held in Lagos.

According to the website macrotrends.net, the current metro area population of Abuja in 2022 is 3,652,000, a 5.43 per cent increase from 2021. The metro area population of Abuja in 2021 was 3,464,000, a 5.67 per cent increase from 2020. The metro area population of Abuja in 2020 was 3,278,000, a 5.91 per cent increase from 2019.

The population surge in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is being promoted by the insecurity in some Northern states and thereby putting a strain on the housing market in Abuja and its environs. To solve the crisis of rising housing deficit in the capital city of Abuja, a businessman and entertainment mogul, Obinna Iyiegbu, popularly known as Obi Cubana, has promised to mitigate the housing challenges faced by Nigerians by providing affordable accommodation for residents of Abuja, irrespective of status or class. Cubana and his associates are sinking in $1million on New Dawn & Casa Cubana Golf resort, 86.9 hectares of land that would have 500-600 housing units constructed along the Jabi-Airport road.

Candidates, parents, teachers, and proprietors of schools fear that Nigeria is ill prepared for this new regime of examinations, which involves the use of high-end technologies like Biometrics.

They also fear that the inconsistencies that played up during the last voters registration exercise and the elections due to computation errors may still occur, causing even more anguish among parents who may have staked so much to register and prepare their wards for the examinations.

He gave the assurance that the committee was determined to ensure that it delivered full concise database for all Nigerians.

The National Database Harmonization Committee has proposed three years for the capture of 180 million Nigerians and other residents in the National Identification card scheme.

The issuance of the National Identity Cards which started several years ago had been slowed down due to multiplicity of data collection points but the harmonization committee had tried to achieve a one-stop centre.

Mr Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications says the Communications sector roadmap and the e-government master plan are ready for implementation.

Adebayo made this known when he paid a visit to the headquarters of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) late Monday in Abuja.

The minister, who was represented by Mr Sunny Echono, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry said that the ministry was poised to commence the implementation of the documents.

What Edo and Lagos states are putting across is that the basis for planning by Nigerian governments in the 21st century has to be a more accurate way of determining people and other resources domiciled within a geographic space. It is unacceptable to plan on imagined statistics when ICT tools are readily available to achieve near accuracy on figures and therefore put across a much more comprehensive and strategic development plan.

The NCC Director of Public Affairs, Tony Ojobo, said this at a three-day Digital Pay Expo 2018, describing digital economy as an inevitable phenomenon of growth, which nations of the world could not resist.

The NCC Director of Public Affairs, Tony Ojobo, said this at a three-day Digital Pay Expo 2018, describing digital economy as an inevitable phenomenon of growth, which nations of the world could not resist.