…as Uwaje calls for reduced stress among ICT practitioners

By Prince Osuagwu
THE Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Prof Cleopas Angaye has described the death of the President of Nigerian internet Registration Association, NiRA, Mr Ndukwe Kalu as a national loss.

Ndukwe was found dead in his office in a manner that suggested cardiac arrest, after chatting with his workers a few minutes earlier before entering his office in the evening of Tuesday last week, to conclude the day’s work.

Angaye was speaking while condoling with the wife of the deceased NiRA boss in their Surulere Lagos home weekend, in the company of former ITAN president, Mr Chris Uwaje and Director Standards and Regulation at NITDA, Mr Inye Kemabonta.

Urging the woman to take heart, Angaye said “the death of Ndukwe is a national loss. Those who do not know the wisdom and expertise that was reposed in the young man may think that the family had lost a a member, but the truth actually is that the whole country has lost a major contributor to Information Technology development.

Angaye said he remembered the role Ndukwe played in the registration of the nation’s country code Top Level  Domain (ccTLD) name .ng, after over 13 years of registering with the current global coordinating internet agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN).
For him, it is big problem for NITDA to find another person in his mould to take over the good job he was doing in NiRA.
Meanwhile Uwaje who also commiserated with the wife of Kalu, noted that the nature of his death reaffirms the sense in the clamour for IT Parks and other ICT recreational facilities in the country so that stress in which ICT players undergo, doing their jobs are reduced.

He regretted that ICT practitioners are overworked and overstressed for wages that could only be rightly described as peanuts.
He wished that the government would understand that ICT is the cornerstone of every economy and treat practitioners in the sector with some kind of recognition and support that could give them a comfortable livelihood to continue holding forth the strong base of the economy.