WHAT WILL SAVE NIGERIA???? NO WATER,LOW FUEL!! POOR ELECTRICITY SUPPLY

Latest turbulence in the Nigerian economy sector and petroleum industry has made many Nigerians worry about our respective futures, and think of alternate routes of development for our country. Writing for Naij.com, Chinedu Randall, who is an IT and ICT consultant, explains why our FG and Nigerians should pay special attention to the information technology field.

“Now that the oil is gone, what should we do next?” Mr. Chinedu asks and goes on to clarify, “Technically, the oil is not yet gone. It still lies in many parts of the Niger Delta and the South East region, but its days as the mainstay of the Nigerian economy and as the toast of the ever-consumerist world are clearly numbered. Countries around the world have already begun to move away from an overdependence on the liquid gold (or “the black curse,” as most Nigerians would say) and look elsewhere for alternative, less volatile solutions to their energy needs. Others have successfully diversified their sources of revenue into areas like tourism, sports and ICT. Unfortunately, Nigeria has not been so foresighted.

“The death knell of the country’s once vibrant and promising petroleum sector was finally delivered towards the end of 2013, after several warnings and doomsday prophesies by leading industry experts and keen observers alike. Ironically, it was delivered by none other than what was once the country’s chief customer and number one market for crude oil exports, the United States of America.

“It’s not a coincidence that everything in that sector went south in the wake of the shale gas and tight oil boom in the States, which led them to backtrack and put under control their previously insatiable thirst for imported crude oil. Ever so a mono-product economy dating back to the early 1970s, Nigeria could not handle the seismic shock and the several resultant aftershocks. The economy has since remained in the tank.

“On Tuesday, after spending billions throughout the year to protect the naira from tumbling against the major world currencies, the Central Bank finally devalued the local currency by 8%. This devaluation, however, is only but one line of reflection in a spectrum of the country’s ailing economy which is yet to recover from the flu it caught from Uncle Sam’s sneeze.

“This is as bad as it gets for a country that imports 80% of what it consumes, ranging from bare necessities like clothes and staple food to luxurious commodities like high-end smartphones and automobiles, and derives a mammoth 90% of its foreign exchange earnings from the “black curse” (or the “liquid gold,” for those who have benefitted immensely from it). Everywhere there is an economic instability, it is the poor that suffers and, according to some debatable statistics, about 100 million Nigerians live below the poverty line of US$2 per day.

“The implications of this recent devaluation of the naira are grave for the common man. A devalued currency is great for a country’s exports and bad for its imports. A devalued currency lowers the prices of exported goods and services, making it cheaper for consumers in other countries to buy them and leading to more sales for the exporters. This is a clear win for people in the export business, but a loss for the importers. A devalued currency shoots up the prices of imported goods and services like cars, furniture, wheat, millet, apples, clothes, electronics and the like in the local markets. This will make it more difficult to import goods into Nigeria, leading to less imports and higher selling prices.

“Be that as it may, the current economic turbulence may be a blessing in disguise. It should propel the government’s financial policy makers to explore other possible areas of growth and expansion. Some measures, I believe, are already in place to look into it. The government’s agricultural sector revolution led by the well-rounded Akinwunmi Adesina is commendable, and so is the transport sector reform that has brought (or promising to bring) the rail lines back to places like Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, Aba, Enugu and Markurdi. The aviation sector led by the promising Osita Chidoka is also doing very well.

“But these are not really the things that will get the country’s teeming unemployed youths gainfully employed. Many of them are clearly not interested in agriculture and it cannot be forced down their throat, while the aviation and transport sectors do not hire people on a regular basis. One area that is currently and grossly being overlooked by Nigerians is the Information Technology (IT), and Information & Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

“IT, ITeS and ICT is the fastest growing industry in the world, according to leading global research firms. Many of the world’s startups are IT-based and a great number of them are run by under-30 CEOs. It is a highly skilled sector that can and should harvest a lot of Nigeria’s unemployed youths; it is flexible and highly profitable.

“IT, ITeS and ICT in the United States is a $700-billion industry; in India it is worth $120 billion (and directly employs about 10 million Indians), and in China it is even worth a lot more at $493 billion. Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce group, in September recorded the biggest ever stock market initial public offering (IPO) in history, worth about $25 billion. Its owner, Jack Ma, previously an unknown quantity and former English teacher from China, is now an IT billionaire, worth around $29 billion, and  richer than Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote.

“The world’s richest man Bill Gates, worth in excess of $82 billion, made most of his money from his IT enterprise Microsoft. The world’s 5th richest man, Larry Ellison, made his money from his IT company Oracle, and today he is worth $52 billion, according to Forbes. Other tech billionaires who all richer than Africa’s richest man include Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, the Google guys Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos.

“All these CEOs run IT firms that are much more valuable than any Nigerian company you can think of. Facebook is a 100-billion-dollar company, Google is worth a lot more, and so is Apple, International Business Machines (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HP), Amazon, Samsung, Oracle and Microsoft.

“IT and ICT are untapped goldmines that I would love the Nigerian government and Nigerians as a whole to look into and invest their time, energy and money in. The possibilities are potentially limitless and the returns can be very great as well.”

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