By Emeka Aginam

To fully enforce and implement Executive Orders 003 and 005 on local content in information technology, the National Assembly needs to enact a holistic law to criminalize breach of the policy, the Minister of Communication, Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu has said.

Shittu Adebayo

The Minister who stated this during the 2018 Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria, ISPON, President dinner held in Lagos, also noted that major challenges to growing Nigerian IT sector has largely been apathy over the consumption of local products and services. “Local content must be  elevated to such a level as to save our economy. What more can be economic sabotage  if actions that cause massive loss of jobs foreign exchange are not redressed?”

Noting that local content does not mean excluding foreign participation in the Nigerian economy, the Minister assured that NITDA was committed to the implementation of the local content program and the executive order on local content.

Responding, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, in his keynote note speech titled The Fourth Industrial Revolution, A golden Opportunity for Nigeria said; “considering that about 80% of ICT hardware and software consumed in Nigeria are imported, by estimation, Nigeria would spend about ¦ 120 billion by the year 2020 on the importation of foreign technologies. The influx of foreign technologies into the  Nigerian market  has made the nation a dumping ground for substandard technologies.”

On his part, the President of ISPON, Olorogun James Emadoye, expressed worry over the enforcement of the Presidential Executive Order on local content; “the enforcement of the Executive Orders on Local Content may not get the expected results unless the government engages its enforcement departments, security agencies and professional associations.   There was no plan on the ground to gradually give a chance to local producers and contractors to improve on their skills.

“These depressing historical facts have continued over several decades. The recently signed Executive Orders by the president will finally begin to give local software industry and practitioners a chance to improve their skills and products with minimal stifling competition from foreign firms. If the foreign giants want to work with the Nigerian local software producers, we are ready to work with them to develop our content. But they can’t give us the plants and export the operators to us,” Emadoye said.

He also called on the FG to enthrone a National Software Policy Strategy and related legislation as he called on all well-meaning Nigerians to give the country a chance to develop.

It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari recently signed the executive order to improve local content in public procurement with science, engineering and technology components. The Order, among others things, is expected to promote the application of science, technology and innovation towards achieving the nation’s development goals across all sectors of the economy.