NITDA bill and stray intellectualism

When I read a piece by ridiculing the contents of the 2021 bill that seeks to repeal the National Information Technology Development (NITDA) in order to realign its mandate with current realities in cyber and technology space, I observed the writer of an article making the round attempted to gull Nigerians with rumours.

In the disjointed opinion, one could suspect that the writer might have allowed himself to be used as a launching pad for a series of malicious media assaults targeted at clogging the wheels of the Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for Nigeria.

Without mentioning names, the writer refers to the mandates of the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Pantami, the Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Umar Danbatta and the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa.

While there is nothing wrong with a son of the north criticising his northern brethren constructively, the writer merely sacrificed academic finesse and intellectualism on the altar of crumbs to attack others with his reckless insinuations and innuendos.

His piece seeks to portray NITDA, despite its tremendous work with meagre resources, as undeserving of a mandate simply because it was cast in a 2001 cum 2007 Act.

He tried to deceive the people into believing that the NCC, the telecommunications industry regulator, is better suited to drive Digital Economic visions, not NITDA, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) parastatal responsible for computer programming and software engineering, IT support, security, systems analysis and design, networks, multimedia, web and database administration.

In his article, he mentioned NITDA 49 times, NCC 28 times and ICT 21 times. Surprisingly, he only mentioned ‘Tech/Technology’ 3 times and ‘Business’ once. Probably, he might have been ignorant of the thrust of the NITDA bill that he couldn’t mention Digital, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Startup and Economy. Yet, while blindly defending NCC, he failed to mention ‘Telecom’.

For context, the writer claims the 2021 Bill seeks to “chop off the powers of the NCC and other MDAs and transfer such powers to NITDA in a dodgy, spiny and controversial manner?”, an allegation devoid of facts but fraught with balderdash and flat out lies.

What he failed to reckon with is that the existence of NITDA precedes the mandates of the Ministry of Digital Economy.

So, if the ministry believes it needs to empower its policy-implementing arm to enable it to achieve its digital economic policy to place Nigeria on the path of growth and development, what is wrong with that?

For the sake of clarity, NITDA was established in April 2001 following the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval of the Nigerian National Policy on Information Technology.

Consequently, NITDA Act 2007 established the agency with the mandate of regulating and developing Information Technology (IT) in Nigeria.

Since its establishment, NITDA has provided the legal framework for IT and pioneered development projects in areas of capacity building, provision of access to IT, goods and services, as well as job creation and national security.

On October 23, 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the re-designation of the Ministry of Communications as the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.

The primary purpose of the re-designation was to create a policy organ that would oversee the development of the digital economy.

The ministry has developed a Digital Economy Policy and Strategy which focuses on the development of the digital aspects of the economy thus creating the need for a review of the regulatory framework.

The Nigerian National Policy on Information Technology was approved in 2001 to make Nigeria an IT-capable country by 2005.

Going by the writer’s logic, a supervising ministry upgrades in mission, vision and mandate, but its implementing arm must remain in the woods.

The National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) has a new vision of making Nigeria a leading global digital economy.

The current mandate of NITDA focuses on the vision of the initial IT policy. NITDA needs a new mandate to refocus its regulatory and developmental mandate for competitiveness in the 12 trillion dollars global digital economy. This is what some are up in arms against.

Also, the assertion that Section 1 of the NITDA bill 2021 is in conflict with the regulatory powers of the NCC is false. The section emphasised Digital Economy, ICT, Systems and Practices which is consistent with NITDA and not telecommunications which is just a sector in ICT.

It clearly states that the aim is “to create and provide a regulatory framework for Information Technology, systems and practices of Digital Economy in Nigeria and all matters related thereto…”

He said: “NCC is the regulator while NITDA is for research and implementation.” False! NCC is a regulator for telecoms and has nothing to do with other aspects of technology.

Besides sacrificing his intellectualism for crumbs, why must the author lie to drive a point? In the real sense, it is NITDA that is doing NCC a favour by allowing a continuous decentralisation of a function the former can and should perform if not for Nigeria’s notoriety for bogus arms and agencies.

I challenge him to undertake a survey between NITDA and NCC to find out which has been directly impactful and helpful to the Nigerian populace in terms of capacity building, provision of access to IT, goods and services, bridging the digital divide, ICT infrastructure and job creation.

As a Northerner and budding journalist, I can testify that before this dispensation. NITDA was an abstract agency in the country. But since 2016 till date, its impact agency has been felt across the nation.

Another contradiction in the article is: “Sponsors of the NITDA bill 2021 have failed to implement a simple NIN-SIM policy for our dear country. Kidnappers have been given free space to use mobile phones to negotiate ransom payments.”

Perhaps if he stopped confusing the role of NITDA and NCC, he would do a great job holding necessary organs of government to account. But for now, his position negates reality.

Nobody should deceive us, the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy require a more robust approach to regulations, standards setting, and guidelines development, with a focus on digital and emerging technologies, and NITDA is best suited to implement this mandate.

I am very sure the legislators at the National Assembly are too wise to be fooled by the conjectures of those trying to confuse Nigerians with their weak missiles.

Hannatu, a member of Arewa Agenda for Sustainable Development, writes from Kano.