The director-general of the agency, Prof. Cleopus Angaye, threw the challenge to the army yesterday at the launch of the strategic business partnership on the Rural Information Technology Centres (RITC) and the Mobile Internet Units (MIUs) established at the Mambila Barracks in Asokoro, Abuja, for the guards brigade.
Prof. Angaye stated that the RITC project was aimed at creating massive information technology awareness, and providing access to underserved communities in Nigeria.
He observed that the penetration of ICT in Nigeria was more concentrated in the urban areas, which consequently affects the nation's desire to join the global trend of building an all-inclusive information society. He, therefore, stressed the need to concretize efforts in surmounting major challenges of the digital divide between the urban centres and the rural settlements.
He also noted that RITC was government’s response towards bridging this gap across the nation in order to establish an integral new global economy driven by ICT.
This move will also give Nigerians who reside in the rural communities the opportunity to benefit from the various programme centres of the RITC, since no citizen will be neglected in the project.
According to him, NITDA had deployed over 80 RITCs across the six geo-political zones of the federation in collaboration with the local government authorities. Some daunting and obvious issues which are very critical and germane to the successful implementation of the project have however been observed.
In achieving all these he disclosed, NITDA, under public private partnership (PPP), would be working with Chams Access, a consulting firm which, among other things, would undertake e-services project management for the RITCs; build capacities of the locations by adding more hardware facilities; provide e-services which include e-learning, e-payment, e-telephony, e-health, e-voting etc; provide business centre operation facilities like internet access, desktop publishing, call centre, printing, etc; recruit and train manpower within the localities; and provide e-government services and user operating manual.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Joshua Uma
Quelle/Source: Leadership Nigeria, 21.07.2010
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