Excerpts:
What’s the status of ISPON currently?
I just took over from Chief Chris Uwaje as ISPON
president and I will be in office for the next two years. So we have a new
executive and we are here to continue with what our immediate past president,
Chris Uwaje has been able to establish. Everyone agrees that he created a very
strong brand and for us now to extend that brand and make the best of it.
Sir you have been actually a long standing active
member of ISPON.
That’s correct.
At a time you were a vice president.
Second vice president.
Between that time and now, what do you think has
changed?
Much may not have changed, but the direction changed.
In terms of the awareness we were trying to establish in the beginning, we will
continue with that but this time we need more focus in some specific areas.
That’s what I talked about at the press conference. One such area will be the
intellectual property and other will be the local content.
Yes, you have been a very big advocate of local
content.
That’s correct.
What’s the inspiration like?
Well, first of all, we must continue with the
dialogue. That’s very, very important. We must continue with dialogue at the
highest possible level to bring to understanding, awareness and to some degree
compassion to the whole concept of local content, vis-a-vis software. Can
Nigerians deliver software solution, say for instance in Oil and Gas industry.
I say the answer is yes. Well there are those who feel it’s not possible. So we
need to engage and engage at every possible level to that fact that we got the
talent and skill set and we also got the know-how. May be we do not have proper
organisation. So, let’s put that organisation together and then strive to bring
some relevance to the Nigeria software community, and to give some hope to some
younger software companies coming up. I don’t want a small kid coming up today
to set up a small organisation because he has an idea in oil and gas sector,
not to have an opportunity to go in for such that is basically what we are
trying to do.
Let’s look at adaptation now. Nigerians are known to
being foreign freak. We very often find it difficult adapting to whatever is
made in Nigeria. What’s your take on that?
Unfortunately, that’s the case and you can’t stop it,
but what we are saying is that in that same space, give some recognition to
those who can deliver a solution. In the United States, they have a policy
where they encourage local software companies to do a lot of stuff and the
people allow room for failure. They even allow for failure even if its
government project or non-government project. I am not saying that Nigerian
businesses will do the same thing, but we must be more supporting for the fact
that there are opportunities for more Nigerian young software companies that
can deliver solutions to some degree and can compete with foreign companies.
Remember, it’s not all foreign companies and products are good for the Nigerian
environment.
A case in point is our own product in the local
industry. In 1996 in the share registration market, there were only foreign
products, may be one or two local products. That one local product was written in
character mode in UNIX environment. Until we came into that industry, they did
not have a Windows-based application in that industry and we came up with a
current server product. Now, today, in the share registration market, it’s not
easy to think of foreign products first. The tendency is that now when you look
at the industry there are local products that can deliver solution they want.
So, if this can change in that industry, it means that
it can change in any other industry. It’s matter of opportunity and taking
advantage of opportunities and grabbing the bull by the horn.
This issue of local content patronage has been there
for some time now. In the past the Federal Government at a stage sent out
circular to that effect to various federal government institutions but it seems
the implementation aspect became an issue. I don’t know how you intend to
tackle that?
Well, the whole concept of local content as we know it
now came out of the oil and gas industry and in coming out of oil and gas
industry, the focus then was on engineering and rightfully solved. All the
meetings I attended at a time, when the NLCD, that is the Nigeria Local Content
Division was a department within the NNPC - Nigeria National Petroleum
Corporation; the focus at that time was primarily on data and it continued to
remain that for a while, but they have to some degrees try to extend it beyond
oil and gas. they got involved in software as well and what we intend to do is
to continue on that dialogue and extend what has already been started in
software and move along to see how we can continue to dialogue to bring greater
awareness to the oil and gas sector and hopefully to other sectors of the
economy.
Are you satisfied with the adoption of local content
even within the IT industry. For instance, if you look at the National
Conference, there is no core IT person there?
That’s unfortunate. NCS - Nigeria Computer Society,
should as a matter of right have the platform with which to speak on the role
of IT in the development of Nigeria and should be part of the national dialogue
to some extent, may be as a component, but there should be some voice, for
instance, in terms of helping education and enhancing the reach of education,
we have e-Learning (electronic learning). So, that is a platform for hardware,
IT infrastructure and software. I don’t see why NCS as the umbrella
organisation should not have a voice in that arena. We are discussing Nigeria
today and future and we cannot do that without IT. We are discussing Nigeria’s
future with the knowledge of the past. Knowledge of the past does not have IT
in it, but today guess what; it’s the key component is IT. That means it’s
recognised as part of everything we do, including social media. Can you take
that away? The answer is no. Before you say anything it’s already on Facebook,
it’s on Twitter or anything socially linked.
So, we can’t run away from the realities of today. We
must as well incorporate those realties in our dialogue on how we want to live;
on how we want to be Nigerians and how we want to move forward in the
development of Nigeria.
Let’s come back a little to InfoSoft, tell us about
InfoSoft?
InfoSoft is somewhat changing by becoming less
software specific and more process driven; InfoSoft focuses more now on the
Business Process Management (BPM). Back then, we used to do a lot of software
stuff.
What do you mean when you say then?
That is about several years ago, but what we have done
now is that we have spin off our software arm to set up Nitech Solutions, which
handles all the software products we use to have in InfoSoft. I am just the
chairman now, while InfoSoft focus primarily in the business process
management.
So, we do a lot of process improvement, process
automation and likes. We do a lot of seminars and conferences on business
processing management; how it benefits governments and institutions and why you
need business processing management (BPM) in the financial services, public
sector and private sector.
Our last seminar was in Kenya and we are working very
closely with Galaxy Backbone Plc in Nigeria and we are coming up with one in
Ghana in a couple of months.
I just came back from Singapore. One issue that came
up during discussions with some key Nigerian participants is that when you ask
a student, especially difficult in connectivity. What do you think should be
done?
There’re lots of issues around that. It’s not just
only that. Like now, we have backbone submarine cables that came into the
country and because of that we are now able to connect to the world. So, MainOne,
for instance, has pulled that cable into Nigeria and
through such cables will be able to reach more Nigerians effectively and faster
too with the wider world. So, in terms of bandwidth we are now able to connect
with the rest of the world and computing infrastructure. Very soon, we should
not worry about broadband only as we should be able to connect using fibre
connection and thereafter better connectivity to the rest of the world.
Our computer science students for
instance, do you think they are living up to expectations in terms of software
development and in the kind of graduates we are producing now?
Unfortunately, my answer for now
on a general sense is no. but that can change and is one of things we talked
about in the press conference earlier.
We will continue to dialogue with
the authorities to help refocus their curriculum and I addressed that by
sharing the fact that during ISPON software contest for students during our
conference in Calabar; each one you ask how they learnt their coding language
that they used in writing their products that they demonstrated at the
competition, That programming language was learnt outside the university
environment. All of them and the following year, it was about 95 per cent of
them; when each person spends more time outside the university environment
learning programming language. How does that help the business? How does that
help the development of our industry? It doesn’t. So, you are taking in kids
for a four-year graduate programme and they are learning most of the time
outside the campus or university environment, yet the university does not
address these kids’ problems or challenges, which are the most toolkits that a
kid needs in the product economy. Now, I am not saying that there is anything
wrong in learning programming languages outside, but if all those students who
came to demo their products at ISPON event, all of them unanimously say they
learnt whatever they used out of the university environment, that tells me that
something is wrong. That’s what it tells me that definitely something is wrong.
Now, how do we address that?
Well, we need to begin dialoguing with the necessary authorities to help
address this knowledge gap or knowledge deficiency.
We need to change this and I said
so at the press conference. You cannot expect businesses like ours to continue
to re-educate someone who has gone through a four-year programme. You can’t
because you will still be expected to be paying the person as well and we can’t
continue to do that. So we have to refocus by dialoguing with the government
agencies, especially the arm responsible for curriculum to find out how it will
help to influence a change to give these kids something better when they come
out from schools.
Remember, today, it’s all about skills. If you go
through a four-year programme in the university and have not touched a
computer, I don’t know how such a person will play his or her role effectively
when they come into the work space. You might as well tell me that a medical
doctor who went through a medical school didn’t touch a cadaver. That’s how bad
it is. And if you that, I will tell you that guy will be a killer of people and
that ‘Hippocratic Oath’ you can just throw it out of the window. It’s the same
thing with the computer science; imagine how you will go through four, five or
six years of college in your life and you have not touched a computer and you
are telling that a cousin, mother, brother or sister bought a computer for your
home personal use and you have gone to some private schools to go and learn
programming language and some database concepts and you now start practicing on
your own; which have no influences from the university property, that tells me
something is very wrong with our system.
I have spoken to a few lecturers and few vice
chancellors who tried to convince me that in their own university, which is
private, the case is different.
I had an opportunity to talk to a few intern students
who came through my organisations in the past couple of years, so I am still
struggling to understand what the VCs and those lecturers are trying to tell
me.
When I see the students, believe me, it’s not quite
the same dialogue, but there are lots to be done which we must continue to do
as ISPON, whether I am here or not, that work must continue.
It seems our curriculum is not coordinated or unified
kind of?
Well, I don’t want to start this
dialogue now, but will engage with the right authorities and see how this could
be addressed, but believe me it’s a major challenge.
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