By EMEKA AGINAM
The federal government is concluding arrangements to establish    Information Technology (IT) Business incubation centres in five states across the federation to among things unleash local talents to drive the ICT industry.

Although the IT business incubation is expected to be established in other states across the nation, Vanguard Hi-Tech learnt that  the five states that would benefit in the first phase of the capacity building initiative are not limited to Abuja, Lagos among others.

Just last week in Abuja, the  Honourable Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson had  inaugurated the Development Committee for Information Technology Business incubation centers in Nigeria. The IT business incubation committee which has 19 member  head by Adedotun Sulaiman it was learnt,  has bee given six weeks to submit their report to the Minister of Communication Technology.

With this development, the Minister had  charged the committee to develop a sustainable framework for a domestic IT Business Incubation framework that would amongst other things, discover, nurture and unleash local talent to drive the growth of the ICT industry, facilitate the commercialization of research results as well as the acquisition and use of state of the_art technologies, promote domestic resource exploitation and improve the international competitiveness of the Nigerian ICT industry.

The terms of reference of the committee, according to the Minister are not limited to the following:

*Define appropriate model for Technology incubation centres

*Define governance and ownership model of the incubation centres

*Define  legal status  and  type of ownership of the incubation  ion centres

*Define funding structure and sourcing requirements for the centres

*Define the rules, condition and criteria for selection, admission and exit of incubators and

*Define the financial planning, particularly identification of financial resources, estimation of capital investment needed, operating expenses, income structure, pricing policy and cash flow forecast. She said that  SMEs had been widely acknowledged as being the most viable vehicle for sustaining industrial development because they possess the capacity to promote an indigenous enterprise culture.

The Minister stated that the intent and expectation of the Ministry was that IT incubation centers would address many of these challenges and would provide an enabling environment that fosters ICT innovation from incubation to commercial success.

Earlier in his response on behalf of the committee, the chairman, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman, thanked the Honourable Minister for offering members of the Committee the opportunity to contribute their quota to national development

He said the committee would work assiduously and diligently to discharge this onerous responsibility which he said was a ‘call to pay to serve’.

Meanwhile, the  committee members were drawn from professionals and institutions vast and bias in the ICT industry.

Members include Chima Onyekwere of Linkserve; Leo Stan Ekeh of Zinox; Barbara James, CEO of Henshaw Capital partners; Mr Toyin Abdulmalik Ibrahim of SMEDAN; Kemi Abonta of NITDA; Emmanuel Onyeje of Microsoft; Mrs Olufunmilayo Ajayi of Oracle; Pius Okigbo Jr, of ISPON; Juliet Ehimuan of Google; and Teemu Kijarvi of Nokia, among others.