Dr Isa Pantami, new Director General at National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) plans to release a technology roadmap to achieve the mandates of the IT agency.
The planned NITDA roadmap will accord priority to deepening Information and Communication Technology (ICT) impacts in Nigeria.
According to him, “we have more than 30 mandates and we are now at the final stage of designing the strategic plans that will help us in repositioning the agency. I can tell you now that the work on the strategic plan is 90% completed. We are to put the agency back to its primary functions and award less of contracts.”
The NITDA DG disclosed this when Senator Abdulfatai Buhari, Chairman, Senate Committee on ICT and Cyber Crime, led his team to the agency’s Abuja headquarters on an oversight function.
Pantami says that due to the broad mandates of NITDA, “there is need to prioritise the core functions of the agency and employ the use of scale of preference to determine what can be quickly done in the area of ICT to compliment the revenue accruable from oil.”
According to him, “we have more than 30 mandates and we are now at the final stage of designing the strategic plans that will help us in repositioning the agency. I can tell you now that the work on the strategic plan is 90% completed. We are to put the agency back to its primary functions and award less of contracts.”
On his watch, NITDA would reduce the tempo at which it awards contract and play most of regulatory roles Pantami says. “Awarding contract for Knowledge Access Centre and Community Access Centre are parts of our mandate but we are going to reduce it because we cannot stop it”, he says.
The new NITDA DG says the agency would play more of regulatory roles in the ICT industry; improve on capacity development by ensuring that the impacts of the agency’s interventions on the scholarship scheme translates to job creations and empower the local manufacturers of ICT products through collaboration to diversify the Nigerian economy.
On his part, Buhari, the Senate Committee Chairman wants NITDA to undertake massive re-orientation that will change the public perception about the IT agency. “We can start on a new slate. We need re-orientation of excellence and we are solidly behind you to achieve this. Everybody needs to take his job seriously and if this is done we don’t need to go for oversight functions”, he says underscoring the readiness of the lawmakers to work with NITDA.
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