Tokunbo Awoshakin   

This article presents Information Communication Technology as a phenomenon that fits into the globalization project of making the world a global village where everyone enjoys the benefits of modern development. article acknowledges that there are obvious potentials for development in the use of ICT in Nigeria. It consequently examines the various ICT projects targeted at Nigeria and attempts an appraisal of how these digital projects have been able to promote social, political, economic and human development in the country. The submission is that existing social problems, government regulations, dependency of foreign software and unequal access to information knowledge and infrastructure remain frustrating challenges to the implementation of plans that could transform the digital divide into a digital opportunity for development in Nigeria.

In the Nigeria of today, the possession of a cellular of mobile phone has ceased to be an exclusive preserve of senators and expatriate officials of oil companies. Everybody, at least in the cities, now carries one kind of handset or another. Similarly, Cyber café and Internet kiosks, with satellite connection, have become proliferated and instant messaging and online chatting are the leisure activities of high school kid. All the banks in the country have computerized their operations and many are beginning to replace customer passbooks with plastic cards with digital chips. Television and radio stations now operate a twenty four hours programming schedule. Live broadcast of events is no longer left in the hands of the federal stations and their advertisers. Penultimate week president Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria announced that the country is going digital and Microsoft has been given the exclusive right to hook the country to the rest of the world. Politicians say all these are dividends of democracy and the government spokesmen boast that they are signs of development. But are they indeed?

Development, refers to a rise in the standard of living of the population in such a way that most people can satisfy their economic and social needs adequately, and enjoy life more fully. Thus the true meaning of development is the realization of human personality through the progressive elimination of poverty, unemployment and inequality. It also involves the linking of the local or peripheral market with or into the central or national market, thereby extending the scope of exchange. It involves increase possession and utilization of resources. Development policies are thus strategies aim at those structures or patterns of resource possession and use, which can elicit, channel, and transform resources most satisfactorily to meet people’s needs more fully, (Szentes^, 1997).

Two age long impediment to access to information are Time and distance. The ability to overcome this obstacles- the death of time- is inherent the popularity of the use of Information Communication Technology in the modern world. It should be noted here that while these technologies are tools that do not in themselves substitute for development, there are conspicuous evidence that development has been promoted by digital technology. (Alcantara de, & Hewitt, 2001).

To be sure the continuing economic boom in the western world and the integration of markets around the planet are both attributable to astonishing advances in Information communication technology. New data networks, automated banking and trading systems, fiber optic networks, instant messaging, cellular phones and automated recording and retrieval are all evidences of the potentials of digital infrastructure. The Internet has increased the speed of these developments. Digital information has thus become a critical tool for development because the potential for developments rely not only on access to information but also on how the Internet adds leverage to what access can provide.

Today, corporate wealth and nation’s economic powers are embodiments of the high level of digital technologies available to these corporations and countries. The argument for a digital empowerment however goes beyond economic sphere. Communication technology is expected to accelerate global development when directed at education, health issues and politics. (Hammond, 2000). Connecting the world through digital technology is calculated to improve the quality of life more generally, by allowing people, even in geographically isolated areas of the world share and benefit from a wider horizon and new opportunities.

Given the potentials of communication technology to accelerate economic growth, to promote human development, to assist in health care, to bring new initiatives to education and health care and to reduce If not eliminate poverty, it has become a universally attractive phenomenon. The socioeconomic impact of the knowledge and information revolution derived from Information and Communications Technology has been compared by UNDP to the industrial revolution, providing nations and individuals alike an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate economic growth, promote human development and eradicate poverty. (Ferdinand,2001) Many African countries, in order to benefit from these gains that communication technology promises have sought the digital empowerment and are still doing so like they sought after independence in the sixties. These countries of Africa seek to develop national capacity and effective policies. African countries, including Nigeria look at the astonishing advancement in western world, made possible by digital technology and seek for strategies and implementation plans to help transform the digital divide into a digital opportunity for their countries and the continent.

The Nigeria government in a bid to get hooked up to the advantages that digital technology promises has become an active participant in many international projects. The country has similarly become a "beneficiary" of many digital benevolence from businesses and corporations that also want to hook up with the Nigeria oil and gas wealth.

One of these project that Nigeria participates in is the Internet Initiative for Africa (IIA). This project was launched in 1996 by UNDP to provide Internet connectivity infrastructure, policy advice, and capacity building support to Nigeria and nine other African nations. The project, which - in many instances - established the first national Internet gateway, national backbone infrastructure, increased national bandwidths and established Internet points of presence was funded through a cost-sharing partnership with the governments of these countries and UNDP.

Another such project in Nigeria, involving UNDP is the CISCO Networking Academies. This is a strategic partnership with Cisco systems and others to establish facilities in Nigeria to provide network technology skills and training facilities to prepare students for the 21st century workplace.

A number of recent events have served to advance the focus on ICT Development and ICT for Development in Nigeria, especially with respect to the United Nations ICT Task Force and its partners. At their 2002 Summit meeting held in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada on June 26-7, 2002, the Heads of State of the G8 industrial countries endorsed the program and Implementation Plan of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the strategic development initiative of the continental organization. (Okpaku, 2001).

The pledge by African leaders in the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) is to establish a common vision and a firm and shared conviction, on the pressing duty to eradicate poverty and place their countries individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development by participating actively in the global economy. NEPAD ICT development objectives are articulated in the basic NEPAD Document. They are:

· to double teledensity to two lines per 100 people by the year 2005, with an adequate level of access for households;

· to lower the cost and improve reliability of service;

· to achieve e-readiness for all countries in Africa;

· to develop and produce a pool of ICT-proficient youth and students from which Africa can draw trainee ICT engineers, programmers and software developers; and

· to develop local-content software, based especially on Africa’s cultural legacy.

Consequently, Nigeria has made some efforts to enhance telecommunications infrastructure and telephone penetration .The implementation of the G.S.M project and the attempt to privatize the National Telecommunication Firm, (NITEL) are in tune with the script of digital empowerment and globalization.

Other projects targeted at wiring Nigeria digitally for development include those initiated by the United States Agency for Development and the Microsoft Initiative. The first initiative includes a A $19.9 million agreement signed by USAID in July 2000 to assist in Nigeria's to reform and expand access to education through efforts to support education sector assessment for all levels, facilitate policy dialogue, and encourage broad civic participation in the reform process. This project include the establishment of six Community Resource Centers equipped with modern information technology including internet access in each region of Nigeria. The centers is supposed to help bring the benefits of modern information technologies (IT) into a broad spectrum of educational activities. The U.S. Education for Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI) provided the sum of $4.5 million to establish the centers. The Centers are meant to train and support local educators, support distance education programs of Nigerian universities, provide computer, IT, and targeted vocational education training to local communities, and support adult literacy and AIDS education. The Initiative was also meant to provide $500,000 in scholarships to girls who would otherwise lack the means to attend school at the primary, secondary or university levels.

Similarly, The U.S. Department of State provided an additional $120,000 to support up to 12 "Azikwe Professional Fellowships." These fellowships, named after Nigeria's first President, was tol enable Nigerian professionals to pursue up to three months of professional training in the U.S. in such fields as educational or public administration, business and journalism.

Microsoft the world's leading information technology, IT, solutions provider, has been given a blanket approval to by the Nigerian government, to support the its objective of bridging the digital divide between Nigeria and the developed economies of the world. Apart of supplying computers and software, the company has been involved with local PC production such as Zinox, and has facilitated the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and South African Information Technology Agency (SITA) and supporting and collaborating with the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) in its battle against piracy in the country.

Can one conclude that all of the projects discussed above have merits because they are truly assisting the country through education, provision of Internet connectivity infrastructure, policy advice, and capacity building. Can one say that the sight of hungry but cellular phone Nigerians on the streets and in internt cafes are true indications of how these projects have been assisting development in the country Perhaps without the benefit of a deeper reflection, one may even give kudos to the Nigerian government for giving Microsoft the monopoly of digital technology in Nigeria.

Let us say development is a process of achieving the personal and community potential to live a good life. As simple as that is, it is still difficult to convincingly say that the projects discussed above have assisted majority of Nigerians to live a good live. It is even more difficult to believe that Microsoft monopoly will do that.

As laudable as some of the digital projects targeted at helping development in Nigeria seem, the merits in them pale into relative insignificance when place into the context of the reality in Nigeria.

Quick questions: What is Internet access in a village without water? ; What use is half gigabyte of RAM when the people need food? ; How will digital technology be available to all when the national provider of energy source is an epileptic government agency? The answers to these questions give more insight to the possibility or otherwise of the digital technology to assist development.

The main problem with these digital projects is that of access. How many people really have access to telephones and the Internet. Many a Nigerian that quickly acquired mobile/cell phones at the introduction of the GSM project in Nigeria are presently unable to afford the cost of charging the phones to make vital calls. Internet access is especially a good measure of the availability of digital technology to all in Nigeria because it requires the integration of individual components like computers, telecommunication and skills. The proliferation of Internet cafes is still largely restricted to cities and urban areas. Even then, many city dwellers still do not know how to use a computer. The few that can still find it hard to afford the increasing cost of Internet use because of the instability electricity power supply and the large dependence on gasoline powered generators. Of course many of the computers available in these Internet cafes and many government offices in Nigeria are the old and antiquated ones either donated by humanitarian agencies or refurbished from at the Ikeja computer village in the suburb of Lagos.

In lauding the UNDP/CISCO and USIAD initiative of targeting education, one still need to raise the question of how accessible this technical education is to the people. How can people in the rural part of Nigeria learn how to use the Internet and make use of its advantages when CISCO academies and the USAIDS centres are in a few universities and urban areas respectively? What kind of access is even available in a country where according to African Internet status report of 2002 has only 60000 dial up internet subscriber and 15000 internet outgoing bandwidth ktps for a population of 120 million people? Obviously the gap in the digital technology needed for development will continue to increase as richer countries have immediate access to emerging (and therefore expensive) technologies whilst Nigeria and other African countries continue to manage cast-off old technologies. The digital divide is just a manifestation of the global wealth/power divide. The centralised regulation and control of digital technology in Nigeria by the National Communication Commission (N.C.C) and the large domination of foreign interest in the Internet Service Provision (I.S.P) in the country are other factors that hinder enhanced access and the ability to benefit from the gains of digital technology.

Given the status of poverty alleviation as the overriding theme in development efforts in Africa, in order to be accepted as a development focus area, Information Communication Technology-oriented efforts must demonstrate their relevance to poverty reduction.

The Microsoft open cheque to dominate Nigerian cyber space, coupled wit the series of economic and institutional reforms like the dismantling of the government telecommunication provider, NITEL, leaves a free rein for foreign multinational to wire Nigeria as they deem proper. The danger in this is that rather than for digital technology to assist in poverty reduction, education, health care and other human development projects, it would be propelled by market forces which may introduce more structural adjustment policies that will further widen the gap between the have and have- not. Again, this is intricately linked to the issue of access.

The award of a monopoly of software operation in Nigeria to Microsoft may thus be a fresh evidence suggesting the ignorance of the Nigerian government to the current trend of embracing open source/ free software by developing countries as an alternative to huge dependence on expensive software technology.

The Obasanjo administration should stop basking in the euphoria of making GSM phones available to people that either too hungry or too harassed by religious conflicts to actually be able to use the gadgets.

Rather in addition to the Network training provided by CISCO and the ICT centres established by USAID, the Nigerian government in other to be able to genuinely use digital technology for development should also begin to invest in local technology players. Rather than award monopolies to economic partners, the Nigerian government need to work with development partners. There is need for a new configuration of the relationship between the Nigerian civil society, government authorities and the private sector to make digital technology work for schools, health care and poverty reduction in Nigeria.

Dec 2002