Technological advancement has been known to assist us, in working and achieving better results in, both, our individual and corporate lives, but can the country benefit from technology, especially, in solving some of our National issues? I recently caught up with Adebiyi Oke, Programs Director, Silicon Base Advisory Group and he spoke on this and other issues, on Tech Trends on Channels Television.
CFA: How can technology solve some of our pressing National issues?
Adebiyi: There are several ways, I believe and professionally, we believe that, government can, actually, help in solving so many of our National issues, using technology. It starts and begins with policy, in the first place. If the Federal and State governments can, actually, play their roles in policy formulation, as regards, helping the people, to overcome certain costs, we believe that technology will solve most of our problems.
It is already, actually, doing so in some areas, but it is not achieving the required mileage. Take for instance, the Fibre Optics Infrastructure companies, I believe quite well that, if the government would support them, the right of way will be less of an issue and they would be able to deploy all of these infrastructures and people can, actually, benefit from them, as much as possible.
CFA: You know, you mentioned this issue of right of way and this issue has been on for like forever. How do we solve it, once and for all? I mean, we are talking about 2019 here?
Adebiyi: Yes. I believe that, the reason we cannot solve this, is because of the greed of the government of the day. They will want to make money from everything they can lay their hands on, but it is painful that, they are not being creative about this.
They are not looking at the fact that, if they do not take the fees that comes from the right of way, if they do not take that fee, of course, with some high level control, in terms of deployment and they, actually, map out where they want these infrastructure to go, we believe that, this can actually, make the necessary impact. The monies they are getting from there, or, are looking to get from the right of way, can actually, be gotten out of the usage the populace, actually, do, how they use technology in the long run, how they use the internet to solve their problems.
Today, people are paying through their noses for data subscriptions and all of that. Why they are doing that, is not just for the fun of it. They are doing that, so that, they can be productive, in one way or the other. I sincerely believe that, if government should take that out of the way and internet is, actually, deployed across several States and Local governments, we believe that people can adopt it and even, Education will be a whole lot better and literacy levels also will improve
You can watch the full interview here.
