With eyes on ICT as a bail out for the Nigerian economy, software development has been identified as one key area that can enrich many Nigerians, but serious attention must be paid to standard to build confidence in the patronage of indigenous software, according to Mr. Adebisi Shonubi, Managing Director, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) Plc. Besides, stakeholders in the software industry are advised to up the ante in building a pool of skilled software developers in the country as scarcity of young and skilful developers is affecting the local industry.
Delivering a keynote at the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON) President’s Dinner 2016, the NIBSS MD, who was represented by Niyi Ajao Director, Technology and Operation at NIBSS, emphasised the need for the stakeholders to develop minimum quality standard for indigenous software to rid the Nigerian market of sub-standard products. According to him, indigenous technology companies still walk a tight rope with convincing everyday Nigerians that their product can compete favourably with global software brands.
“We need to work on certification of software products in Nigeria. If you talk to businessmen in Nigeria, many have stories to tell. Many have taken the risk to use local content and at the end of the day, they get hurt”, he said. “In my view, government needs to see how software can be certified with label to say this has met minimum quality such that people would have confidence in buying our product”, he told the gathering in Lagos.
He however asserted that there are many indigenous software that are of international standard and can compete anywhere in the world but expressed worry that they are not receiving the necessary publicity. “I am proud to say working with local software developers at NIBSS, we are pleased with the level of their output and I would encourage them to do more , but I am surprised that many people still don’t know about these software because they are not in the media”, he added.
Harping on the need to embrace local content, he said, “if we must reduce unemployment in Nigeria, then we need to enforce local content policy”. According to him, the foreign brand is designed, most times, to meet the needs of people living in that locality where they are produced. In my own experience, when you buy those software and bring them here, at the end of the day, 50 per cent of the functionality don’t apply in our environment”, he added.
Meanwhile, the ISPON President, Mr Pius Okigbo Jnr, earlier in his opening address, observed that at this challenging and significant moment of the country’s national development, Nigeria was faced with the task of articulating and mastering its IT strategy as an effective response to the emerging information society. “There is a new mantra currently headlining ‘Made-in-Nigeria.’ For this mantra to hold true, we must set aside our cultural inhibition and disdain for things that are made locally”, Okigbo told the gathering.
According to the ISPON President, “we must imbibe a new ethos for local content. We must believe in ourselves and in our abilities. On our own side, we must hold supreme the core principle of quality, integrity and knowledge to enable a merger of trust of the producer and of the consumers”, he added.
In his goodwill message, the acting Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Dr Vincent Olatunji, pledged the agency’s support for indigenous software developers in the country, noting with the challenges facing the nation’s economy due to crash in oil prices, ICT is the only bail out. “We all know the state of our economy right now. Our 2016 Budget was prepared on $38 per barrel. That shows that we need alternative to oil in this country and one sector that can bail us out is the ICT sector and in fact, the software sub-sector is a great revenue earner for the government”, he said. According to him, many advanced country that have done well in their ICT sector have leveraged on the potentials in software sub-sector to earn huge revenue. He therefore called for collaboration between the private and public sector to ensure that the Nigeria ICT sector moves to an enviable height.
Taking the local content campaign further, the National Coordinator, Office for Nigerian Content Development in ICT (ONC) , Mr Inye Kemabonta, while speaking at the event, disclosed plans to hold a ‘Compliance Workshop’ for government officials this month, with a view to creating more awareness for indigenous ICT products in government cycle. According to him, the workshop was to expose government to capabilities of many Nigerians and to encourage them to patronise indigenous ICT products as against foreign ones.