President Muhammadu Buhari says the digital economy sector has raked in about N46billion in IT projects clearance, making it the most successful in the diversification of the nation’s economy.
The President stated this in Abuja, while unveiling two new policies developed by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.
Linking the two policies to the diversification and prosperity of the economy, President Buhari said the National Policy on the Nigerian Government Second-Level Domains and the National Data Policy, were central to accelerating the development of the nation’s digital economy sector.
He said his administration would continue to develop policies and programmes in furtherance of the diversification of the economy.
“In the last three and a half years, we have intensified the development of policies, design of programmed and implementation of projects in the digital economy sector and the impact has been very impressive”.
“For example, we have succeeded in diversifying our economy to a large extent and this is obvious when we consider the contribution of the ICT sector to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the second quarter of 2022 which stood at 18.44%, compared to the contribution of the oil sector to the GDP which was 6. 33% in the same period”, he explained.
The President said that Nigeria’s strides towards a thriving digital economy started on October 17, 2019 with the designation of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and the restructuring in line with its mandate.
According to him, 21 new national policies and strategies have been developed by the Federal Government since 2019, stating that the policies and strategies are national instruments to support Nigeria’s digital economy at the national and sub-national levels.
On the issue of digital identity for the country, President Buhari declared that the present administration had actively promoted it as key to a sustainable and secure development of Nigeria’s digital economy, which will ultimately promote the use of the right identity by all Federal Public Institutions.
The President urged government officials to refrain from using private emails for official purposes and Federal Public institutions (FPIs) must migrate their websites to the relevant government domains.
On the recent deployment of Starlink services by SpaceX in Nigeria, the President expressed delight that Nigeria was the first and only African country to have the link, adding that with the deployment of Starlink service Nigeria has 100 percent broadband penetration.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Pantami said that the two policies being launched were outcomes of compliance with the President’s directive to come up with a National Policy that was earlier approved by the Federal Executive Council.
He maintained that the policies are targeted at consolidating on the gains achieved so far in the digital ecosystem.
Reporting by Abdulla Bello;Editing by Fany Olumoye, Julian Osamoto & Adeniyi Bakare