By Dare Fasube

NIGERIA’s multi-faceted socio-political problems may continue unabated if its leaders continue to neglect the importance of systemic gathering and organization of information, otherwise called Information Technology, IT.

This was the submission of the Head, Computer Science of the University of Ibadan and the first female Professor of Computer Science in Sub-Saharan Africa, Adenike Oyinlola Osofisan.

Wife of the famous literary icon, Professor Femi Osofisan, gave the view at the weekend while delivering the 2010/2011 inaugural lecture, entitled “Transforming Data Dust to Data Gold” at the Trenchard Hall of the institution.

To her, unless Nigerians and its leaders changed their attitude on data collection and management of information, the nation would continue to be counted among the undeveloped countries.

She lamented that while many nations had discovered that the organization of life and progress in the modern world “is almost impossible without the systematic gathering and organization of information”, Nigerians instead distinguish themselves in cyber crimes and internet frauds, making Nigeria to be ranked No 3 globally in cyber crimes.

Just as Nigeria is still battling to wriggle itself out of the menace of the dreaded Boko Haram sect, the don was of the belief that for it to live in the information age, and break the jinx, the weapon of IT must be adequately used.

“We have the means of changing our lives for the better and joining the globalization train, not just as passengers, but, as drivers and pilots. One of the weapons in our hands is Information Technology (IT), I mean the convergence of the Telecommunication and Computing Industries”, she said.

The Computer Scientist, who reeled out various researches she had carried out for the progress of the institution, disclosed that there were almost limitless possibilities that exist within the field of Computer Science and “especially of KDD to grapple with and offer solutions to the many problems that beset us in this nation”.

To the lecturer, “the creation of Enterprise Data Bases and of Data Warehouse is a must in every sector of the Nigerian enterprise in this era of knowledge economy”.

“Within these data lie valuable information from which knowledge can be derived to find solutions”, Osofisan advised.