Encouraging IT Professionalism For The Benefit Of the Common Man

It is a known fact that no serious economy can develop without IT. All the more technologically advanced countries have been known to leverage on IT.

The case of Nigeria cannot be different. It would be repeating the obvious to say that this country has enormous potentials and resources in IT for it to be reckoned with in the comity of nations, but we have not been able to harness this resources and potentials into a structured and patterned developmental process.

What we have presently are pockets of IT solutions and applications developed by few professionals, more for personal gains than national good.

And I think that it is time we begin to approach addressing national infrastructural challenges and development using IT differently.

There is need for synergy among IT professionals practicing in the Country. The open source development model should be explored.

Encouraging Professionalism For The Benefit Of The Common Man

The IT profession, globally, knowledge-based as it is, no doubt, has become an all-comers affair.

In Nigeria, the profession is probably the most abused. It is so bad that anybody that can press a few keys on a computer will claim to be a professional. Some have even turned it into a kind of trade that you learn.

There are at least two informal computer training institutions on every street in the Country.

These institutions use curricula that are neither defined in content nor standardized by any authority.

Yet they award all sorts of certificates, diplomas and even degrees in some cases. Even the so-called formal institutions are equally guilty.

Some of them still use curricula that are not only obsolete and outdated but also out of tune with reality. Some of them do not have even the most basic of laboratory equipment.

There are computer science departments in some of our tertiary institutions with graduates of other disciplines as heads.

All these to me are a mockery of any serious attempt at taking advantage of our IT industry for national development.

The IT industry is what some developed nations have leveraged upon and are today dictating the pace of the world.

If we are really serious about development as a nation, the attitude to the industry has to change drastically.

I have noticed in this Country that the issue is usually not that of identification of the problem, neither is it proffering the solution but the aggregate will of the people to make a change.

There is also the problem of the political will by decision makers to implement solutions. The myriad of problems in the country will persist as long as these two attitudes remain.

There is a definite need to professionalize the IT industry for optimal benefits.

The industry is too sensitive and strategic to any meaningful development to be left unregulated. We need to start by defining the terms, just like it is done in other serious professions.

There must be set standards to be attained before being recognized as a professional. These professionals must then be given set goals and targets. We also need to define our national IT needs, goals and objectives.

The professionals must then be encouraged to come up realizable and workable approach to tackling our national infrastructural and developmental challenges.

The poor power supply situation in the country today, the very erratic and almost unreliable telecommunications service and the seeming intractable daily security challenges are a sad reflection of our uncoordinated approach to the potentials available in our IT industry.

The IT industry in the country needs to be coordinated, organized and focused. The players in the industry need to come together and synergize, else the foreign companies will continue to dominate and take advantage.

The efforts of NITDA in terms of encouraging local content in the IT industry should energize and challenge the professionals.

There should be concerted effort to sanitize the industry, so that quacks and briefcase-carrying impostors leave the profession.

There should be adequate recognition and reward for the professionals. There should be preference for locally developed solutions to foreign ones that can do the same things. All these will further encourage the professionals to be more productive and this will ultimately benefit the nation and our dear common man.

Finally, I think it is time we begin to invest seriously in research and development, so that we can reduce our dependence on foreign ready-made products and solutions. We have the resources, what we probably need to pray for is the will.

A paper delivered by Mr. Sikiru Shehu, registrar, Computer Professionals (Registration Council of Nigeria) at Nigerian DigitalSENSE Forum 2014 held in Lagos on 5th & 6th June, 2014.