By Chibuike Nwabuko
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – Prof Ajibade Biodun Michael has said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to stay and will speed up a concept of developmental process within the ministries, parastatals, agencies and also within the organised private sector.
He stated this on Monday at a Policy Dialogue with the theme: “Artificial Intelligence in the public sector: opportunities, risks and challenges in Nigeria,” organised by Natoonal Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM).
The professor of Technology Assisted Learning said AI is very important and garmane because we know that our country has been suffering, especially the public sector in the area of efficiency in the public sector.
According to him, with the AI, we are going to have a well cordinated digital libraries that will stand the test of time and staff of MDAs coming late to work and even delays in files movement will be a thing of the past.
He said we must all bear in mind that today’s world is not divided by ideology but by technology, bridhing the gap between the developed and the undeveloped. Adding that everything about technology is solutions and when approached with solutions, it automatically energises developmental process of a country.
Prof Michael who acknowledged that Nigerians are very intelligent said with AI and in a short while, Nigeria will be completely transformed. Stressing that with the listening government of President Bola Tinubu that has taken A.I as their baby and with Nigerians having been waiting for this, we should be prepared with what is coming – you will find flying cars, planes that is electronically propelled that do no use fuel.
He therefore called on government to create the enabling environment so that those who need funding will have the capacity to access it without having a bottleneck. No foreign country is going to come here to to develop our country for us, we have the ingenuity to develop our country and it is time to get it done. He reiterated that all that government needs to do is to fix all the equipment manufacturing companies in Nigeria and give license to those who want to come in so that we can be able to put the structure in place that will guarantee the succession of the AI.
Earlier in his overview of the significance of the Policy Dialogue on AI in the public sector, the Director General of NACETEM, Dr. Olusola Odunsanya said the innovativeness that ICT gives us, innovativeness our issues in oil and gas, mining and those bread and butters opportunities begin to beg the question of deployment of A.I in a very aggressive and rigorous manner.
The DG said that despite that in Nigeria, vocationally trained people occupy 70% of all job journal, yet today many of our institution that train vocational people are converting from professional training to universities. He now wondered at what point shall we begin to focus on the most important job journal in Nigeria – vocational training. He maintained that we may have made an error by focusing too much on higher education and to the neglect of vocational training.
Dr. Odunsanya said notwirhstanding, NACETEM stands in the middle as a finishing school for those who have all forms of education and find themselves in both private and public sector. It is based on this that these array of personalities who are by no means ecperts in the field of AI are gathered to dialogue on the first steps Nigeria will take in developing a framework for the use of AI in national development. While the framework is being developed, we will now begin to take first step on regulation that will eventually lead to the evolution of an aggregation of those extant rules that we already have that guide the rule of technology such as this but we have not focused on this powerful technology sufficiently and that is why NACETEM has taken it upon itself to make sure that we begin to set the pace for this dialogue, Dr. Odunsanya said.
