Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that Nigeria’s reputation in the near future will be based on the imagination and creativity of Nigerians.
Osinbajo stated this in a virtual message to the 2020 Art of Technology conference themed: “Smart data, Smarter Lagos”, yesterday.
According to him, “it is now evident that within the next decade, Nigeria will cease to be a country whose main contribution to the world is crude oil. The resources that we have, which are increasingly in high demand globally, are your capacity for innovation, imagination, creative content and highly adaptive solutions. Your minds and workspaces are the refineries of the present and the future.
“We are finally embracing the true logic of true wealth, it is not being a primary producer; it is about value-added. It’s about maximally leveraging what you have, technology, and in particular, data offers that incredible opportunity.”
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The Vice President noted: “As we contend with the challenge of providing the means of self-actualisation for nearly 200 million people and one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, it is clear that we must marshal the resourcefulness and ingenuity of our citizens in the quest for development and growth. Developmental governance in the 21st Century is about continuously deploying innovative solutions against our most complex challenges.”
Speaking about the adoption of innovative solutions to address some complex issues bothering on governance and the economy, the Vice President said that “smart cities leverage data to make decisions across board. Economic data, consumption data, demographic data, population data, health data, are all important factors. Across all levels of government, we need to raise our capacity to harvest, track, and analyse data and ground policies in empirical evidence.
“Data is at the heart of developmental governance. Indeed, I would argue that governments need big data even more than corporations do. Whether we are discussing urban planning and public administration or economic planning and security strategy, it is impossible to attain mastery over these fields without a healthy regard for data.”
Osinbajo said “technology can be a leveler, closing gaps in our society, such as the rural-urban divide and bridging gaps in access to social services and broadening financial inclusion.”
He said: “This is why this administration is working to bridge the digital divide by increasing access to broadband with our National Broadband Plan, which was launched this year. The plan is aimed at achieving 90 per cent broadband penetration by 2023. The plan will give special attention to underserved areas when deploying telecom services.”
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