President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Your Excellency, I write to you with all sense of modesty, understanding that no single human knows it all. I am also aware of how intricately connected your success as a president is to our nation’s continued existence. I do not envy you Sir.
I am a strong believer in this great nation of ours and those who know me understand that there may be no other Nigerian as passionate about my country as I am.
This is one of the reasons why I was vehement and loud in my critique of your nomination, screening, and subsequent appointment of Dr. Bosun Tijani as your minister for a very crucial tripodal ministry: Innovation, Economy, and Communications. This tripod can change the face of this nation if properly utilised.
I had written Sir, that I do not believe that Dr. Bosun Tijani possesses the required bandwidth to man this very crucial ministry.
I had written an open letter to him about his fixation with Artificial Intelligence (AI). In my letter I outlined low hanging fruits that could set Nigerians on the path of prosperity. I even posited Sir that AI is not within the purview of his ministry. That is what the Ministry of Science and Technology should be concerned about.
It was the easiest thing for him to implement coming from his CChub antecedents. Gather a few kids together, coin a training or development lingo and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and development monies. It is good for his business but does not move the needle as far as development is concerned. Beautiful PowerPoints are nice, but they are hollow in outcomes and only pander to the guilty consciences of their Silicon Valley Lords.
AYỌ̀WÁNDÉ ADÁLÉMỌ, Founder of Atmosphere and CEO of Wave 5 Wireless Limited.
Dr Bosun Tijani: The Minister and a tripodal ministry
I am of the view that his tripodal ministry is beyond a few buzzwords and fad.
After I wrote that letter, I got a lot of calls and invitations by well-meaning Nigerians who urged that we give him some slack. Some people close to you Sir urged that I delete the tweets and the letter. I did. I do not regret listening to my elders.
The recent Draft of the National Digital Economy and e-Governance Bill is why I am compelled to write this open letter. I am convinced that Dr. Bosun Tijani cannot help you achieve your Renewed Hope Agenda in that Ministry.
Why do I so assert?
First, Your Excellency, I am not a graduate. I dropped out of the Olabisi Onabanjo University in my third year to pursue my entrepreneurial calling. I have innovated in this space in the last 20+ years. So, if anyone can understand the power of a digital economy on the psyche of a young mind, it would be me.
I epitomise the power of a digital economy. A proud school dropout, who can dream, innovate, execute and birth solutions to life without a degree, with only his WAEC certificate and a collection of technology certificates is the stuff of movies. That boy who dropped out of school is today along with his co-founder, Biola Akinyemi a second time founder able to raise over $10m in funding, able to employ young Nigerians and give them a sense of purpose, able to give jobs to contractors and vendors who in turn employ others. That is the power of the Digital Economy.
But it can also be the reality of millions of our young people. While the school loan solves a gigantic problem for our teeming young population, there remains questions around curriculum, learning environment and the practicality of what we are taught in class. When I dropped out 20 years ago, I was frustrated by how mediocre and archaic our lecturers were. My distraught father, Samuel Odu Adalemo, could not fathom it when I said the University did not challenge me, so I dropped out.
Your Excellency, the lure of creating a platform to catalyse a digital economy not only challenged me but inspired me to no end. Seeing the effect of my solution on people and how in turn it helps them conveniently do what was a chore or help them scale gives me a hundred-fold the value of a degree or any certificate whatsoever.
I wear several hats today, one as Founder and CEO of an innovative Internet Service Provider (twice over since 2009), the other as a Director at Founder Institute Lagos (the last five years) as they say I am an “OG” in the communications industry and a veteran in the “tech” ecosystem. So, I am speaking from the vintage point of experience as an innovator, an entrepreneur, and a valuable ecosystem player.
The Digital Economy is not some utopian ideal that we need to attain. It is not a virtual version of the economy, nor is it separate from it, the Digital Economy is the tooling of the economy for scale using technology to enable either manual or redundant processes. It is the implementation of policies, programmes and interventions that ensures digital tools are adopted for and used by businesses be it Government or Private. It is in the background, enabling, innovating, upgrading. It is not the focus. The economy is. The SMEs are. The telcos are. The ISPs are. The MDAs are.
So, you can imagine my consternation as I watch your appointee stumble from one policy to another.
From the 3MTT to the $2bn 90,000km fiber plans and now to this digital economy and e-governance bill Dr. Tijani has demonstrated to those who should know that he is struggling. Let me start with the latest instalment.
The Digital Economy bill
I have read the draft bill about three times and the 35-page document which passed the first reading leave me wondering if this document really originated from the executive arm of the Nigerian Government and sent to the National Assembly.
The Bill seeks to “enhance the use of digital technology to grow Nigeria’s economy. To create an enabling environment for fair competition to promote innovation, growth, and competitiveness for the Nigerian Digital Economy. To create export-oriented capacities in Nigeria’s digital economy to improve Nigeria’s balance of trade and services. To encourage and improve service delivery, openness, and accountability for delivery of public or citizen digital services. To provide a legal framework to support international digital trade and investments using digital means. To create a framework for the enhancement of digital economy governance amongst the Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
This is laudable but when you read the bill Your excellency, you will be left wondering if the copy of the bill you have has been altered.
The entirety of the bill reads like a memo trying to enforce the use of and acceptance of electronic signatures, documents, and communication as valid and legal. It also stipulates penalties that would accompany any MDA or company that would do otherwise.
The shocking part of this bill is the insistence that where the law requests an original document it should not insist on paper versions as an electronic version would suffice if the integrity of the electronic form can be ascertained.
Your Excellency we live in the age of misinformation and manipulation. There is no electronic version of anything that the integrity in transmission, storage and retrieval can be trusted. Not even blockchain technology is immune to manipulation. The question is how big the reward if that information can be manipulated? Terrorist, saboteurs, and the opposition (within and without) will do anything to manipulate data. Your Excellency, think of what this will mean for our elections, our financial Institutions, our Tertiary institutions.
What was Bosun thinking?
To make matters worse, this very pedestrian document in part XIII speaks to the “Supremacy of National Digital Economy and E-Governance Act.”
“Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law but subject to the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in all matters relating to digital economy and e-government, the provisions of this Act shall override the provisions of any other Law.”
For a document that lacks the “how” and leaves a lot of questions unanswered, it will supersede the electoral ACT, the NCC ACT 2003, the NITDA ACT, and all other acts. This is sinister Your excellency.
It is also shocking that the prime agency for IT policy making and Implantation NITDA in 2019 produced a comprehensive framework called the Nigerian Government Enterprise Architecture (NGEA). This 130-page document is the most comprehensive policy aimed at correcting all the anomalies in government processes, information management, and deployment/implementation of ICT projects across the government in the next five to ten years.
It is so granular and so detailed, yet it is ONLY a guideline not even a policy under NITDA. Why not elevate that 130- page document to a policy document as it is a much more well thought out document than this drivel that was sent to the National assembly.
This new bill triggers a lot of questions, and the feeling is not right. If this bill is passed, 2027 elections and all other off-season’s elections are in danger. If electronic data is manipulated what will that mean for our country? For the continent especially as the veracity of the data stored is dependent on a simple assurance that it has not been significantly altered (see section 27 under part V).
Why reinvent the wheel and instead of a wheel we get something worse than a semi-circle. This should not be a bill your excellency, it should be thrown out by our legislators. It is nothing but a memo withing the same department of the ministry. The Minister should dust the NGEA and use that AS A GUIDELINE for all MDAs and private businesses doing business with the MDAs.
Bosun is setting a trap with this pedestrian bill. If he needs to enforce e-governance, NITDA has all the tools, he has all the authority. A new bill is not required Your Excellency.
3MTT
Your Excellency when Dr. Tijani announced this programme as a policy direction of the digital economy, I chuckled.
1. It was the easiest thing for him to implement coming from his CChub antecedents. Gather a few kids together, coin a training or development lingo and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and development monies. It is good for his business but does not move the needle as far as development is concerned. Beautiful PowerPoints are nice, but they are hollow in outcomes and only pander to the guilty consciences of their Silicon Valley Lords.
2. Digital skills do not translate to digital jobs. I hear the comparison with India every time. If you give three million youths digital skills, some will get jobs, the majority will have to develop other skills to survive. Training three million people for digital skills when your communication networks are under lot of strain, when we do not have a single affordable local cloud service infrastructure, when the cost of data is high, yet the MNOs are groaning under heavy losses, is very counterproductive. We do not even have the capacity to train 100,000 people virtually. Congestion is a real problem as is sabotage and vandalism in the communications industry. We have not seen any groundbreaking home-grown innovation since Glo’s per second billing changed the game over 20 years ago.
3. To train millions of young people for digital skills will require thinking and execution beyond a shallow 3MTT programme. It is not in his purview to implement. To a carpenter, every problem looks like a nail. The 3MTT cannot be what he implements to show he is working; it is not a shiny toy your son gets from the neighbor and runs to show daddy. It must be a deliberate multi-stakeholder approach. The ministry of education MUST be at the core of this both at the federal and state levels. Partner with MNOs and ISPs to ensure there is some form of internet access at public schools. (As an example, at wave5wireless we have vowed that we will ensure every public primary and secondary school close to our PoPs will get free internet access. Our first of such is in Sabo Yaba Lagos).
4. He then works with the ministry to rejig the curriculum from primary four to include the skills required spaced into modules for lifelong learning. By the time that child is in SSS3, we would have a soldier digitally equipped for global relevance. There is a lot to this including at what point does the system determines when a child is better fit for technical education? Or we do not need excellent artisans anymore? Once we use technology to sort that, the Ministry of Labour can take charge of ensuring these competent hands are first line of contacts for Federal and state jobs. The Ministry then works with Ministry of foreign Affairs for exported Labour. Make this into a bill and take it to the national assembly. In Six (6) years Your excellency, we will have an army of Nigerians with the right kind of skills for both the white- and blue-collar jobs.
5. The bottom-line is that we can catalyse the 3MTT or 40MTT with the right foundations. It is the foundation of a digital economy; it is NOT a low hanging fruit.
6. Furthermore, what we need technology to help us solve in the immediate are soft skills. With the right kind of incentives, we can encourage our Corp members to take immersive soft skill trainings. That will create more jobs in the short term than 3MTT. The mindset of our teaming young is skewed and needs reorientation. With the ministry of Information, we can help millions of young people position themselves for opportunities.
90,000 KM Fiber optics network
Your Excellency, while this sounds laudable, it is a disappointment. The problems bedevilling the communications sector is NOT a fiber optic problem. To have a robust and thriving economy run by digital tools, our telecommunications network must be resilient, always available, always on. It does not have to be cheap. It must be robust enough for productivity. In fact, Sir, there is no 3MTT, AI, or Multilingual large language model without an excellent communication infrastructure.
The issues we have now are NOT related to fiber optics infrastructure. As I write today we have over 40,000 Km of fiber across the country with over 60% of this capacity underutilised. Most of the Base Transceiver Stations in urban areas are linked via fiber optics.
We are confronted with sabotage, vandalism, brain drain (which leads to design problems), maintenance, energy (that is a crisis now) and funding.
The solutions are in some instances political but in most cases collaboration. While Bosun feels at home with NITDA (this is understandable, it is the easiest thing to do), he should be much more involved in the telco/ISP/National carrier space.
How does Nigcomsat, Mainone, GLO1 and all the myriads of data centres take up the underutilised capacity for use in rural Nigeria?
How do we raise less than $2bn to catalyse the infraco license holders? Can we sit with the Dangote Group and NRC and see what we can do with the rail line right-of-way held by the group? Can we sit with TCN and Phase 3 Telecoms for the powerline Right-of-way? If the infraco licensees can get offtake monies can we consolidate all fiber infrastructure across the country and have NSCDC as the security agency responsible for the protection of these critical national infrastructure?
Why deploy internet access to the 774 local government secretariats where innovation and productivity will be zero? Our Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education need huge bandwidth as they are all implementing learning Management Systems (LMS). About two-thirds of our tertiary institutions are in Rural Nigeria. If we deploy resources there, we will see not just innovation catalyzed but we will also see rapid adoption and consumption of internet services across rural areas. We have seen this happen on social levels across Nigerian schools. Our students stay mostly off campus. The institutions are accessible by the community.
Your Excellency, we need someone who can take long term decisions now while at the same time take advantage of low hanging fruits.
One major low hanging fruit that can generate billions of Naira NOW is NIPOST. I use the service every week Sir and I can tell you it has deteriorated since you became President and commander in chief.
Meanwhile NIPOST can become an engine room for the digital economy TODAY. In 5 months, NIPOST can turn around reputation, handling, shipping times and coordination. It will take a lot of guts, but NIPOST can be your crowning glory in the digital economy space. Again, the technology and the human resource to change things are available. NIPOST will move from what it is now to being the centre of an overarching delivery system that delivers millions of parcels each day across Nigeria, securely and efficiently.
NIPOST is the ONLY organisation in Nigeria that can accurately carry out an address verification exercise which will match verified addresses to NIMC and other identity management systems. Another low hanging fruit with respect to security, credits, censors, and identity management.
My cofounder Biola Akinyemi suggested that we also deploy internet and power to every NIPOST office close to our Points of Presence. We were advised against it. Yet these offices need critical infrastructure that partnerships and collaboration can provide.
I needed to speak at this point because we are running out of time. It is no longer a luxury you have Your Excellency.
Please get Bosun back on track, create a new ministry for him, or ship him out.
Please accept, Sir, the assurances of my highest consideration, Ayọ̀wándé Adálémọ.
Editor’s Note: AYỌ̀WÁNDÉ ADÁLÉMỌ, Founder of Atmosphere and CEO of Wave 5 Wireless Limited, sent the article originally titled “OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT AND GRAND COMMANDER OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA” for publication by Technology Times.
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