NITPA Report - New Nigerian Initiatives in ICT

Dear Colleagues;

As part of a Nigerian Professional delegate, we met yesterday with
President Olushegun Obasanjo in Washington DC to discuss the federal government's part in seeing that skills and human resources abundant in the dispora Nigerian community is properly mobilized and utilized towards our ongoing nation-building. As many of you know, NITPA is purely professional and non-partisan; it is the goal of our organization to seek effective means of practicing our IT trade including in the five areas of our focus: telecommunications and Networks, IT Application, IT Development, Consulting, and Education & Research.

In that vein, we made a brief presentation to the President on efforts made so far by NITPA and other Nigerian professional organizations (ANPA, NLA, etc) to work hand-in-hand with the Nigerian "officialdom" (regardless of who is on top), to solve our technological, medical, legal and other professional problems. NITPA was given 5 minutes to give a quick recap of our areas of interest. We spoke of our initiatives including the IT Curricullum audit, the Open University, the indiginization bill, the Telecommunication initiative, the IT exchange program, and we also emphasized our methods and approach which
includes sourcing of projects through sweat-equity by NITPA members and eventual funding from Nigerian and international agencies. The president was pleased to know that Nigerians are emerging on their own professional rights, and made an announcement which I wish to bring to your attention. Nigerian
government, he said, is planning to initiate a "Professional Voluntary Service" for professionals in Diaspora; The scheme will cover ICT, Health Services, Agriculture, Education and (one other area....I was not taking notes...just heard ICT first ;-)) Anyway, they are yet to work out the details, but the scoop is that Nigerians who wish to, can be retained through the program for a period of a few months (or weeks) to work on specific projects. The government will pay for their freight round trip to Nigeria, provide accommodation and give a small stipend. They assured NIDO that the program was not meant to replace the work that that entity was supposed to be
doing.

My Commentary: As IT professionals, we were told that there's lots of opportunities for us to contribute to the development process, but at this time, I will only counsel our members that we'll take a wait-and-see posture until we know what they have up their sleeves in Abuja. As always, our patriotic nature makes it necessary for us to participate in any national call to duty, "voluntary" or not. But as experienced professionals, we will cross that bridge when we get there, for the devil is always in the details. Stay tuned.......

Brotherly,
Manny C Aniebonam