- ‘Nigeria Can Save $5.6bn Annually Through Digital Transformation’
Nigeria can save up to $5.6bn annually if it digitally transforms and integrates the information and communications systems of its public sector, university dons, as well as Information and Technology, experts have said.
In their latest research work, the IT experts outlined the benefits of a digitally transformed public sector and particularly urged the Federal Government to work towards transforming the country’s civil service into a digitalised one.Speaking on the sidelines of the public presentation of a book titled, ‘Digital Transformation: Evolving a Digitally Enabled Nigerian Public Service’, in Abuja, a professor from the Department of Electronics/Electronics Engineering, University of Benin, Joy Emagbatere, said the non-digitalisation of Nigeria’s public sector had created a lot of waste.
She said, “Digitisation will bring about open government, accountability, trust and transparency. Another benefit of digital transformation is being able to eliminate or reduce duplicity in the public sector. You see that many agencies and ministries in Nigeria today often do the same thing with different infrastructure.
“This has created a lot of waste and so much money has been wasted in the process of duplicating efforts in the system. From the report contained in this book, we can save $5.6bn annually from spending on the ICT if we can transform our public sector through digital transformation process.”
According to Emagbatere, the public sector is the policy implementation arm of government that ensures service delivery to citizens, adding that Nigeria is ripe enough to be transformed digitally.
The author of the book, Edo Jacobs, said one of the aims of the research work was to make government officials take actions that would lead to a digitalised public sector.
He said, “We (experts) think we needed to act so that the people who are responsible in the various government institutions can take action. So, what the book is set out to do is to reorganise the economy and provide a sustainable way to manage the country going forward.
“The statistics used in this book come from many notable global and local institutions like the World Bank, the United Nations and UNIDO. But the question now is that what do we do with the statistics that we have, especially in the area of finance?”