Oghenevwede Ohwovoriole in Abuja
A South Korean Professor of Computer Science, from Sangmyung University, Hung Park, has urged the Nigerian government to diversify her economy in order to become one of the world’s leading digital global players.
Park, who gave the advice in Abuja during a two-day E-Government Master Plan workshop with the theme: “Building Foundations Towards Digital Governance in Nigeria,” said South Korea was once solely relied on agriculture for their economy growth until the economy was diversified through education.
“In South Korea, the country used to rely on agriculture alone, until the government realized the implications and quickly diversified the economy beyond agriculture and invested heavily in other sectors like Education, Entertainment among others.
“So I want to encourage Nigerian government to do the same because I have also noticed that Nigeria is now heading towards the right direction with her e-government project and the first phase of the e-government master plan has been implemented from 2014-2019.”
According to Park, “Though Nigeria has successfully implemented the e-government master plan, she still needs to diversity her economy. Nigeria is known for her huge dependence on oil, but there is need to diversify and invest in other areas like emerging technology that is driving global development.
“Over the past eight years Nigeria has been able to implement only one aspect of the e master plan as recommend, which is the establishment of the presidential council for e-government and they made the first phase a national agenda. So this is a good start towards transforming Nigerian government into a digital economy, but more need to be done. The e-government master plan is not just a document, rather the success factors of it is how to implement it. It is for this reason that the Nigerian government has brought us together to discuss the second phase of the project.”
The Country Director of Korea International Cooperation (KOICA), Son Sungil, stated that Nigeria was on her way to achieving a fully digitalised economy, adding that the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy should be commended for developing the Nigeria e-Government project, which is the Masterplan (NeGMP), in fulfilment of its mandate, which is to utilise Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to drive transparency in governance and improve the quality and cost of public service delivery in Nigeria. This, he said, was done through research, collaboration and extensive engagement with other relevant stakeholders with the support of the KOICA.
