Corruption is killing ICT in Nigeria

The new pastime for governments at different levels in Nigeria is the development of ICT resource centers. It is a pastime that state governments and local councils love to indulge and one that the federal government is not shy to get involved in.

In the past four years or so, more than half of the 36 states governments have set up one form of ICT resource center or another. Billions of dollars have been voted and spent on these projects, and the testimonies in several locations are "white elephants" -- concrete halls with a mesh of wires, poorly connected dusty systems and wide expanse of space that speak of abandonment soon after the projects were officially launched with fanfare.

Critics of governments’ involvement in ICT projects, who have always argued over whether computer procurement was more important than mosquito nets and farm implements, are having a field day. They have become apostles of truth in circumstances that have clearly proven that governments have not really been sincere in prosecuting an ICT empowerment program among the youths for whom the program was designed in the first place.

Whether in the north or south of the country, facts are emerging on how ICT projects have merely ended up as conduit pipes with which billions of U.S. dollars have been siphoned from the public treasury into private bank accounts.

In Edo State, there is the story of how the past government of Mr. Lucky Igbenedion gave a $1 million contract to a contractor to supply a 1.2-meter communication dish worth no more than $1,000. Eventually, the horrified government of Professor Osunbor, who has since been removed from office, had to renegotiate the contract to $5,000. The government didn’t want to cancel the contract outright so as not to step on toes. Today, the dish sits inside Benin City, capital of Edo State, as scrap metal. It never worked well for one day. The new governor of Comrade Oshiomohle has threatened to revisit every contract issued in the last four years.

Some his findings will involve the PC aid schemes that were to be sponsored by the past state governments but that somehow became a thing of the past, even after the contract was signed and public money was sent into private hands. You would find a similar scenario in other southern states.

In Akwa Ibom State, there are increasing complaints of how the immediate past government spent billions of U.S. dollars setting up an ICT resource center that has become no more than a glorified cybercafe. The dream of setting up a center that would be an incubator for technology companies has long become a hushed nightmare in this oil-rich state. Critics tagged "enemies of progress" are demanding that official reports on the billions spent on the technology projects in the state be made public. They want to justify their argument that computers could not have meant more for the peoples’ well being than bags of fertilizer.

Indeed, what happened in Edo State is a metaphor for what is happening everywhere else at state, local and federal levels. The noble objectives of bringing ICT to drive economic development have been perverted. In ICT, politicians and their cohorts have only found a formidable weapon to loot the national treasury.

I had written three years back in Tunis at the World Summit on the Information Society II that Nigeria and many Africa countries are still not serious about driving development with ICT. I do not have very serious reason to alter my standpoint. Nigeria needs to reexamine its ICT vision and look at how advanced democracies and emerging giants such as China and India have been able to leapfrog their economies using ICT. I do not see how it can achieve genuine economic growth using ICT without first attacking corruption. If this fundamental problem is not addressed, the efforts of those in civil society attempting to spread ICT diffusion in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa may come to naught. Corruption does not enable real growth, even in ICT.