Retrieved from Allafrica News
 http://allafrica.com/stories/200204110104.html

This Day (Lagos)
By Okechukwu Kanu
April 11, 2002 
Posted to the web April 11, 200

The sixth Nigeria Software Exhibition (NISE) was given a tinge of excitement, Monday, with a challenge from the Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Turner Isoun to the Nigeria ICT industry to seek ways of "transforming our nation from an IT consumer status to an IT income-earner status."

The minister's remarks, given at the opening ceremony of the sixth NISE was, he said, in recognition of software as the engine driving the information age.

Isoun said Nigeria needed to be a part of the $20 trillion anticipated gains for the IT industry by the year 2005. For this reason he sought the active participation from all the key stakeholders in the industry, with the government providing the necessary enabling environment. He said there was no doubt it would require great commitment and total re-orientation on the part of the Nigerian entrepreneurs to achieve this aim.

Isoun said, "It is government's fervent hope that this annual event will continue to provide the platform for Nigeria Software experts to meet and explore the possibilities of collaboration as well as promote healthy competition in the industry. NISE is definitely helping to contribute to meeting the objective of making Nigeria a net exporter of IT software products in the nearest future."

On his part, Minister of Education, Babalola Borishade, who was represented at the occasion by an official from the ministry, Lanre Fagbohan, acknowledged that there was a conclusion from those who had reassessed Nigeria's education future that ICT had a pivotal role to play in the provision of the type of education required for living a full life in the 21st century. He said, "The big challenge therefore is making of a computer literate society, through well planned integrated strategies."

He was grateful for software exhibitions such as the NISE because of their relevance to the ministry's reform programmes in education. He however said that Nigeria needed to identify and select realistic and relevant technology (hardware and software) to be used for the delivery of these new programmes. This, he said would be done in collaboration with appropriate experts in the field.

Earlier in his welcome address, Ladi Ogunneye, President Computer Association of Nigeria (COAN), said NISE had kept on growing since its inception and that this year one of the additional exhibitors was a company coming all the way from Ghana.

According to Ogunneye, "Having missed out on the industrial and printing revolutions, active participation in the rapidly expanding IT revolution is being offered to us in the developing countries, on the platter of gold through IT and particularly through software."

He said Nigeria, with its vast reserve of human resource deserved a more respectable place in IT and listed out areas like back office support for foreign software firms, participation in major international projects and white collar and blue collar employments as some of the gains of software development for Nigerians.

Ogunneye finally advocated a united software developers' body because such would "provide for a reasuring face that can lead to government's willingness to post-performance guarantees on behalf of Nigeria Software Developers as one of the responses to the image problem."

This year's exhibition sees the participation of about 56 exhibitors, 13 more than participated last year.

The sixth NISE is organised by the COAN in collaboration with the Federal Ministries of Science & Technology; Education; and Information & National Orientation