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ICT in Nigeria

I believe that we
have not done badly. We have come a long way. I am saying this not
because I don’t realise that there is still a lot for us to do. Not
because I don’t realise that a lot of other countries are out there
very much ahead of us. But I am saying this because of where we started
and where we came from.

By 1996, when I
came back to this country, during that period, there was no access to
the Internet. Only a few banks had access to computers in terms of
having real time online experience. During that period, no bank had
ATMs; no bank had any card payment system. During that period, mobile
phones did not exist, apart from the big ones 0 9 0 and only a few
people had access to them.

But today, the
country has met the international requirement in terms of teledensity
and surpassed it. Today, mobile phones in the country is over 70
million; whereas, during that period, we had just over 400, 000 phone
lines. The few that gained access to the Internet were doing so through
a system whereby the Internet service providers go to the Internet,
download so many pages, catches them so that people can view those
pages; which means it was not live.

Policy requirement

Nigerian
Communications Commission has done very well, and it is largely as a
result of the good work they have done today that the country is
enjoying rapid development and rapid diffusion of mobile telephony in
the country.

When we talk about
ICT, it does not only has to do with telecommunications; it also has to
do with computers. In terms of computers, there is still so much that
we need to do. So, when I talk about the right kind of policy, I mean
that this country has to have a vision of where it wants to go to as a
country and know the role that ICT will play in order for us to achieve
that.

As is now widely
recognised in the whole world, there is a positive co-relationship
between the level of development in ICT and the level of economic
development. ICT plays a catalytic role in the economic development of
a country. If you have determined what you want to do in the area of
economic development, you can also sit down with the right kind of
people to articulate an ICT policy.

I am aware that
there is some sort of ICT policy in place in Nigeria, but I am also
aware that it needs to be recalibrated and brought to a level that it
really can work. We need to have the right kind of policy, and we also
need to implement 100 percent. We need to bring some good people, from
academia, from industry, and from government to sit down, look at what
is happening in the rest of the world, and say this is what we want to
achieve with regards to ICT in the next 5, 10 years, and see how it is
going to merge into our development policy.

Nigeria as Silicon Valley

It all depends on
how serious we are as a country. If we believe we can, we will
definitely because we have the wherewithal. Nigerian universities still
churn out many people in ICT and a lot of Nigerians are also studying
overseas in different areas of ICT. Outside of Nigeria, Nigerians are
achieving feats in the area of ICT. Many of them are highly recognised
and deemed to be very good with international reputation.

Here in Nigeria, as
somebody that has been in organisations where ICT professionals are
interviewed and recruited, I have seen on many occasions, people that
are fresh from Nigerian universities, yes, you can say they don’t have
a lot of practical experience, you can also say a lot of them don’t
even have some of the theoretical sophistication you are used to seeing
in some ICT people overseas. But I have also seen a lot of them, even
within six months of being exposed to how things ought to be done,
become marvelous.

As somebody in the
ICT industry, I know that Nigeria has so many good people in ICT today,
not just at the high end, middle end, but even at the very low end. So,
I know that with the right kind of policy, with the right kind of
targeting, with the right kind of focus, this country can by far become
the silicon valley of not just West Africa, but the whole of Africa,
because we have all what it takes.

All we need is just
the right kind of environment and push by both people in government and
the industry, and it can be achieved. We need people that are not just
trained in how to programme computers, but who can also create all
kinds of software. We need people that have also been trained to view
the development of software as an engineering enterprise. If you go to
a place like India, you see a lot of software factories because
software is being created almost in an automated manner with
engineering discipline.

Use of local software

As a patriotic
Nigerian, it worries me that at this point in time, given the number of
people churned out every year from our universities in the area of ICT,
that even up till now, many of the software we make use of in this
country are developed abroad. I believe that it is eventually going to
change, especially if the right kind of focus, the right kind of
polices are articulated, and that sense of urgency I am talking about
is brought to bear.

We have a lot of
talented Nigerian programmers who can come out with beautiful software.
But coming out with beautiful software that you can use to replace some
of the mission-critical software we are using in the banking industry,
it is not just the talent of how to write software that is needed.

A great deal of
entrepreneurism is needed. A great deal of project management ability
is needed so that very many people can come together to produce a
software. A lot of the software we use in the banking industry was
produced by about 100 people over a two or three year period.

Unfortunately,
here, we believe that just because somebody has studied computer
science, he can knockout software within a week; but it is not like
that. A lot of the very good software we are using were products of
team effort of 100, 200 or 300 people coming together with many
man-years in order to come up with the product. Yes, we may have the
talent in terms of software development ability, but I don’t think we
have the talent for how to manage big teams, big projects, or how to
make sure that big software development product that we are embarking
on can be subjected to international quality standards.

That’s the problem.
If you are an IT manager in a bank of any other institution, your
organisation is competing against other firms. Definitely you want the
best for your organisation.

Central switching system

At some point, when
I was the chairman of Interswitch, I felt that Interswitch was the de
facto national switch because all the banks were interconnected to
Interswitch. I felt that most other financial institutions and other
organisations that need to interconnect would do so through
Interswitch.

But somewhere along
the line, there were so many other switching companies that were
created in competition to Interswitch. Which means that because of that
need to have a national switch, not just several switch, just like in
telecommunication, there was that need for proper interconnectivity and
the way the country chose to do it was through the Nigeria Inter-Bank
Settlement System (NIBSS).

So NIBSS has come
out with a national switch that all the other companies are now
supposed to interconnect to and all the other players within the
financial industry are supposed to connect to. All the banks have now
had to connect to the national switch in addition to other switches
that they are presently connected to.

I think it is a
good thing because of the need for proper convergence. I believe that
as a result of the deadline (December 1, 2010), people are hurrying to
interconnect. From the point of view of NIBSS, the system is ready. All
they want is for others to start connecting. Once that happens, they
will start the system.

There is nothing
wrong with giving deadline. Sometimes, deadlines help us to quicken our
resolve and hasten our work, and we complete what we need to complete
within that time frame. Much of what we are doing or trying to do in
the world of ICT, especially with regards to the payment system in the
country, is very new, and as a result, it is understandable that you
might proceed on a particular path only to realise that you ought to
have done it differently. I don’t see what is so wrong that somebody
that proceeded on a particular path realiese that that path may
probably not be the best and may wish to progress on a more efficacious
path and then decides on that.

Level at Unity Bank

Unity Bank has done
very well with regards to diffusion in the use of technology. As you
know, Unity Bank is an amalgam of nine banks. Even if you bring two
organisations that have mission-critical IT systems, it is very
difficult to merge their ITs and even cultural and operational
processes. It is even most difficult to manage nine banks.

When Unity Bank
started, we found that some of the banks had legacy systems that were
good, some appalling, and some did not have any at all. There was a
bank that in each of their branches, they had different applications of
different ledgers. So, in converting them, it is almost like converting
different banks also. That is bringing about a sort of combinatorial
explosion.

You have problem
merging nine banks and only to find out that within the nine, some are
like more than 80 banks, on account of the different branches they had
that was not speaking to one application. Believe me, it has never been
done anywhere in the world. One way or the other, we were able to
achieve this.

So, we are as good as most of the other banks that you can say is
very good in ICT usage. We are one of the best in the industry, but
there is still room for us to improve. We are a level two organisation
going to level three.