By Emma Okonji
The Executive Director, Systemspecs, Mr. Deremi Atanda, has stressed the need for the federal government to create an enabling environment that will encourage a lot more people to actively participate in technology development in order to have better understanding of technology.
Atanda, spoke at the 2019 Technology Conference with the theme: ‘Building The Future’, organised by Techpoint in Lagos, said the federal government needed to put general interest over personal interest in its policy formulation and implementation, in order to influence and motivate more people into technology.
“In terms of government paying more attention, yes. We need a lot more people to understand technology and the potential of knowledge economy beyond oil and that is our area of focus. We need people who can speak to hearts if Nigerians concerning technology growth,” Atanda said.
He added, “There should be no personal interest for those who represent our interest in government. They can help us take advantage of the realities of the current world, especially as it relates to technology and that is what Lagos State is doing today.
“I don’t know if you have heard of Code Lagos initiative where Lagosians at the primary and secondary school level are introduced to software development, building a manpower base for free and people are tapping into it because technology is the future and we need to build a lot more of that,” he said.
Atanda, insisted that technology would always remain a thing of reality such that no one can legislate against it.
“You many choose to ignore it but it will assert itself and that is why it is a wilderness of opportunities. This is because there are so many things you can do with technology and a lot of exceptional Nigerian sharp minds can take care of that. Many of the things we do here are also what we can take outside of here. So the opportunities are endless,” Atanda said.
While speaking on entrepreneurship, Atanda charged start-ups to understand themselves better in terms of what they have to offer, what they will do and what they won’t do, adding that ignorance of that would lead to failure.
According to him, you need to know someone. The most important person to know is you when it comes to getting projects from government. You need to know what you have got to offer, what you will do, and what you will not do. Immediately you don’t know these things, you are almost setting yourself a failure because it means you will go in any direction and you get desperate if them all.
“You need to know yourselves and have some values you want to live for and for us as organisation, we go through that evolution of defining values,” Atanda said.
