Abuja – Mr Rex Abitogun, the Chairman, Nigeria Computer Society, Abuja chapter, has called on the Federal Government to put in place policies that will create enabling environment for ICT to thrive.
Abitogun made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said that government needed to create an enabling environment for computer science and information technology graduates to operate.
“Government needs to have policies that will affect graduates of computer science and information technology positively such that they can be looking inward.
“They can start developing solutions that can solve local problems.
“We have ICT Parks that we have talked about, how often do we monitor these parks, I have not really seen any government ICT Park that is working the way it should.
“Maybe some private individuals have done something in the past of which government can equally borrow from and these are the things that we need to look at,’’ he said.
Abitogun said that government should find a way of helping small ICT firms to access loan from banks for them to grow.
He said that government through the Bank of Industry should try and see how it could help small businesses with single digit loan.
The chairman said that the bank could equally encourage small business operators to come up with ideas that could help them grow.
“Beyond that, there must be training and retraining of people in the sense that the small business owners really need to understand the Industry.
“The only way you can get this done is when organisations like SMEDAN organises workshops for them from time to time and equally help them to understand business strategies.
“ At the Nigeria Computers Society level, part of what we do from time to time is to bring the academia, the industry and the professionals together such that they can have exchange of ideas.
“We bring people that have done well in business to share their experiences,’’ he said. (NAN)