Nigeria must develop ICT sector for economic growth —SystemSpecs boss

AN expert has described the emergence of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as the best thing to happen to the world and Nigeria in particular, saying there is the need to educate more people, especially, up-coming generations on the importance of this sector and the need for coming generations to embrace it.

The Head of Technology, Infrastucture, and Payment Gateway, SystemSpecs, Mr. Mujib Ishola, who stated this during the Nigeria Fintech Week,  with the theme, Surviving with  Fintech Innovation : Investment & Capacity Building as Sustaining Factors, which took place at the University of Ibadan over the weekend, said it was very simple for Remita, one of the subsidiaries of SystemSpecs, to identify with the organisers of the programme since it was all about education concerning the importance of the ICT and which SystemSpecs is all about.

Ishola described  Fintech as the short term for Financial Technology and that it can be simply described as the use of technology to facilitate financial services. He pointed out that government must do everything to promote and develop the sector for the country to experience more economic growth.

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Mujib said to survive in this global technology world, one will need to learn and relearn and that one must be ready to reskill his business orientation across all business areas, and this will call for inter and intra industry collaboration.

“As job hunting became more competitive, graduates need to be more hardworking to differentiate themselves from other candidates and acquiring ICT skills is one way to achieve this,” he said.

Also speaking at the conference, the Oyo State governor, Mr Seyi Makinde, said the government is committed to the well-being of its citizenry and that it is always ready to put in its best to support good initiatives aimed at achieving improved standard of all sectors, while restoring the past glory of the state as pacesetter.

Makinde, who was represented  by the State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Professor Kehinde Sangodoyin, noted that the state government recognised the importance of such programme as well as public-Private Partnership initiatives, and assured that Oyo State was ready to adopt desirable models developed during the conference to complement existing models currently being utilised to achieve the agenda of the present administration.

“We believe that now is a good time to remind everyone of a fundamental limitation of the ability of the state to make the world a better place.

“All these advances in one way or another rely on the internet, which is a tool for more than half of the world population,” he stressed.

In his assertion, the convener of Fintech,  Dr. Olalekan Obisesan said more than ten universities were invited for the programme and that the University of Ibadan put everything together using the university apparatus to make it work.

“We are interested in encouraging the students, youths in particular, so they can be more aware of the various investments and various business opportunities around them, we gathered them for various business building capacity for sustainable development,”  Obisesan stated.

 

Nigerian Tribune