By Chris Uwaje
What has Information Technology (IT) has in common with FIFA? Join me as we explore and analyze the impact of the just-concluded soccer games of all times and let’s find out.

Was Nigeria’s competitiveness during the just concluded FIFA 2010 World Cup a questionable catastrophe? The answer is freely available and known to all! However, it seems many of us may have grossly underestimated the global long-term impact on the already down-graded image of Nigeria as an unreliable mental stock?

The growing disregard for Nigeria’s “Big Brother” (for nothing?) emotional image in and amongst people of African descent all over the world, especially within the continent — has gone perhaps too low for current and future comfort in the realm of global competitiveness — with particular reference to human thought and knowledge processes.

Now, what has Information Technology (IT) has to do with FIFA 2010 hosted on the African Continent by Africans? Everything! Lessons learnt from conventional wisdom dictate that all the above can indeed be classified as “crack before the knowledge storm” in the emerging knowledge-driven Information Society (IS).

Before we explore deeper into the core attributes and analysis of this critical subject, there is need to reflect into our past and ask the following questions: What is competitiveness? How does a nation achieve competitiveness and with what? How do you measure competitiveness?

The variables before us in responding to all the above suggest that we need to turn our national education governance and development policies and strategies upside down in order to reconstruct our national development plans for engaging the colossal challenges of the emerging knowledge society that stares us in the face.

The output of the Nigerian lads (Pls, don’t call them Eagles anymore – they are simply Nigeria!) measured in quality was very poor. But so are the structure and poor finishing of most Abuja and Lekki Peninsula buildings/houses! Indeed, so are most of the fresh graduates from our universities, our drivers on the roads, most presentations in our National and State Assemblies, our restaurants and hotels, our beaches, markets, toilets, NEPA/PHCN, National and State secretariats and indeed the totality of our living environment. We find this weakness almost everywhere — on our university campuses, in our transportation, on roads — where you find greedy and poorly trained drives! The story is the same and the cause is “Weak Institutions.”

The leap-frogging route is to attaining the status of a globally competent nation — be it at the sports level or at the knowledge development level is to channel the majority of our national resources/investment into mandatory education for all (building skilled human capital), infrastructural development and health care/delivery system. This is necessary in order to eliminate the main enemy of our development challenge — “our thinking poverty”!
The engine room of such a development strategy should be anchored in Information Technology.

This is why the national institutional framework for Information Technology must have a cabinet rank portfolio at the National Executive Council level to enable it attain its national development objectives and sustain global goals.

Measured against the background of a national thinking poverty analysis, our national performance at the just concluded FIFA 2010 World Cup suggests that Nigeria runs the risk of complete failure when the stage is set for the very near future ‘knowledge Olympiad’ — where the knowledge, skills and competence in Information Technology replaces the “FIFA Ball.”

In a nut shell, the future of nations of the world and how they impact and are rated in global competitiveness will be based on their IT dynamic capabilities and operational capacities across all survivability platforms. We must cross over to machine mind-state society and leave our feudal thinking poverty to those failed states who, without any fear of contradiction will become some of the ‘digital colonies’ of the near future.