December is an interesting month for many people because it is mostly tied to one form of celebration or the other.
I am particularly excited about this year’s December and the simple reason is that a major technology event, GenesysIgnite, is billed to hold later this week in the beautiful city of Enugu.
Now, what I find most heart-warming is the fact that this column has been instrumental to making this event a reality.
In my close to five years of writing this column, I have seen quite a number of policies and changes that I had written about come into effect. I have also seen some initiatives such as GenesysIgnite brought to live.
I remember writing about how difficult it was for foreigners to get Nigerian visas and the need to improve the entire process using technology. A few weeks later, the vice president signed a number of Executive Orders, which introduced a regime of visa-on-arrival for foreigners. I believe that, we all can make an impact and I do celebrate impact when made, however, small or inconsequential they may seem.
Let me share another interesting story of how impact is being made through this column. A little over a year ago, precisely on September 11, 2016, I wrote a piece titled, “Digital transformation or wheelbarrow pushing”. For me, the thinking was, how could an entire region act like digital transformation going on in other parts of Nigeria meant nothing to them?
Here is an excerpt from that piece; “…South-Eastern states cannot afford, in this age, to pay nonchalant attitude to the importance of technology for development. Without mincing words, there is a huge gully between the South-East and other regions in Nigeria, with regards to digital transformation. At present, there is no thirst for technology investment in that region as we find in others. Too bad! ….However, as a concerned, averred and ardent believer in the powers of information and communications technologies as the modern tools to cure man of the ‘cancer of the pocket’ (financial lack) and intellectual malaise, I feel very grieved because of the neglect of this goldmine by the South-Eastern states.
If you travel through the streets of Lagos, London, New York, for instance; you will see or hear names of Nigerians of South-East extraction, innovating, while in the streets of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states, what you see and hear are the ever-vibrating sounds of ‘Okada’, street trading as hobbies, and the most annoying- wheelbarrow pushing contractors. Such is a generation with tied-up destinies.
Continuously blaming infrastructural deficit, at this point, — Finish Reading on the Punch
