FG releases 10yrs action plans on digital communications

Ali Pantami

Aminat Isah, Abuja

The Federal Government has said it is on course at ensuring that at least 95 percent of Nigerians become digital literate in ten years, starting from year 2020.

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami disclosed this at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja to usher in year 2020.

According to Pantami, the 10years bench mark for the digitalization of Nigerian citizen is subject to availability of funds, and would not end with the current administration as government is a continuum, adding that there would be comprehensive documents for the incoming administration to implement.

” Except we have the skills of manipulating our digital economy and digital gadgets, we cannot go anywhere digitally. Starting from 2020, we want to embark on a massive training of Nigerians on digital literacy and that is why we have so many classes of trainings.

“We have digital Nigeria for women, Digital Nigeria for Journalists, Digital Nigeria for unemployed youths, Digital Nigeria for unemployed graduates, Digital Nigeria for civil servants, Digital Nigeria for chief executives, Digital Nigeria for youth, Digital Nigeria for people with disability,Digital Nigeria for children, so we have Digital Nigeria for all citizens subjects to availability of funds which is the constraint,” Said the Minister

He further said, “We want to ensure that we embark on training of Nigerians on digital literacy, some on digital business depending on their interest, and our focus is for you to be able to read and write.

” If you can read and write you can be trained, but if you don’t know how to read and write, you cannot be trained and that is why our plan subject to availability of fund in the next ten years, we want to ensure that at least 95% of Nigerians are digital literate.

” However our administration will come to an end in 2023. But it really says why we say in the next ten years. Its not about one administration but about Nigeria as a country. Our focus is the country and government is continuation whether we are in place or not.

” We want to ensure that we leave office with at least documents for the incoming administrators to come and implement. That is why most of the documents we produce are from 2025, some 2030 and this is where we are targeted.

” It’s not about us but about Nigeria as a country so because of this we want to embark on this digital literacy and digital skills and we have already started since 2019, but in 2020 we want to redouble our efforts subject to the availability of fund,” Explained Pantami

Explaining further, the Minister said the training would be carried out by the ministry’s sisters agencies such as the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), NIGCOMSAT, Galaxy Backbone, but more limited to each as every parastatal will be directed to partake in training Nigerians according to their own mandate.

He encouraged other parastatals that have sufficient fund and ought to build capacity to key in and see how they can support the efforts of the federal government in training and retraining Nigerians.