FG to establish ICT varsity in 2017 —Minister

THE Federal Government has said it will establish an Information Communication Technology (ICT) University in the first quarter of 2017.

The Minister of Communications, Mr Adebayo Shittu, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja, when he featured at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum.

“By the grace of God, in the next three to six months, we should have established in Nigeria an ICT university which will be first of its kind in Africa.

“This is with the sole purpose of providing training environment and training facilities to make the industry have enough skilled manpower in various sub sectors of the ICT sector.

“I am happy to say that we already have what is called the Digital Bridge Institute which is for short term training programmes in six locations across the country and we hope to transform this institute into the ICT University of Nigeria.

“I am already talking to a lot of operators at the international level, Facebook, Motorola, Ericson, all of them. We are encouraging them to come and adopt the university campuses as their own.

“They can bring in money and bring in faculties and a lot of logistics to assist in training Nigerians and we can now export these trained skilled facilitators to African countries to work.’’

Shittu said this would also earn us a lot of foreign exchange, adding that the ministry was at the stage of discussing with the Ministry of Education and the National University Commission (NUC).

“And all of these have already given us support, so we think that within the first quarter of the year, the implementation committee will be set up with a view to putting things in proper place for the eventual take off,’’ he said.

The minister said the ministry had also inaugurated the National Digital Literacy Council to ensure that Nigerians  are digitalised.

He said the council would drive the process of encouraging Nigerians to embrace digitisation and to embrace ICT “which is one thing that will eventually become the soul of business in this country.’’

“ICT is like electricity, you don’t see electricity but you feel it. Without electricity no other sector can survive.

“In the same vein, ICT is one enabler of every other facet of development at the national level, local level, even at

the personal level. So, this digitisation is to ensure that everybody keys to it.

“We are looking at a situation within one or two years,various files in offices will disappear and digitisation will take over instead of people piling up files, all that.

“The coordinated wholesale centre in Onitsha which is situated in Oba will take care of the Onitsha overhead bridge. And we have inspected the location and been granted approval and development has started,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Registrar, Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN), Mr Elijah Mohammed, has restated Federal Government’s commitment to ending open drug hawking on August 1, 2017.

Mohammed, who gave the assurance in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Monday, in Abuja, described this as part of efforts to regulate drug distribution system in the country.

He said the move would assist in curtailing the menace of open drug sale.

Mohammed attributed major challenges in the health system to open hawking of drug, adding that majority of the hawkers sold fake and adulterated drugs.

The registrar stated that coordinated wholesale centres are currently being built in four states of the federation, where open sale of drugs is predominant.

H said the drug dealers would be relocated to the centres to enable them to carry out their activities in a coordinated manner.

According to him, the centres would go a long way to curtail drug hawking, among others, adding that there would be strict regulation of drug distribution and sales at the centres.

NAN reported that there are open drugs marketers or dealers, dealing in unlicensed medicines in and around the streets, major markets like Idumota in Lagos, Onitsha, overhead bridges, Sabongari in Kano and Nyanya-FCT, motor parks, among others.

Noting the locations of the centres as Kano, Lagos, Onitsha, Aba Mohammed, however said construction of the facilities are currently ongoing.

He, however, said all dealers would be relocated to the designated centres to carry out their activities, adding that the relocatiuon would be properly regulated.

The registrar, however, said anyone caught operating outside the centres after the specified date, would be arrested and prosecuted by security agency.

“The issue of open drug market will come to an end by August 1st next year, and we are working toward that and have put in place necessary measures to take care of that which is the coordinated wholesale centres,” the Registrar said.

“The coordinated wholesale centre in Onitsha which is situated in Oba will take care of the Onitsha overhead bridge. And we have inspected the location and been granted approval and development has started.