Nigeria: ITs will help in poverty reduction - State governor

Highway Africa News Agency

The governor of Nigeria's Imo State , Chief Ikedi Ohakim, has declared that the evolution of Information Technologies (ITs), would make the difference in the fight to reduce poverty in any country.

Chief Ohakim, who spoke at the on-going 21st international conference and Annual General Meeting of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) being held at the Imo Concorde Hotel, Owerri, Imo State, under the theme "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria: IT strategies and tools."

Ohakim said that the conference is coming at a time when Nigeria and its people are putting everything in place to ensure that the country benefits from global strategies to reduce poverty by the year 2015 as stipulated in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

"As the most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, the issue of poverty is one Nigeria can no longer afford to pay lip service to," he said.

Gov. Ohakim stressed that while the nation was striving through local efforts to reduce poverty in the land, he strongly expressed belief that Nigeria must link with the rest of the world in the strategic agenda.

"This is because poverty itself is not only a universal phenomenon but it's contagious," he said, noting that those rich nations cannot really claim to be rich in the face of pervasive poverty among more than 80 per cent of the world's population.

Gov. Ohakim emphasised that with the modern breakthroughs in Information Technologies, he strongly believed that it would make a difference.

"As I have always said, the difference between wealth and poverty is information," he said, adding that given giant strides in ITs so far, ?there is a growing optimism that mankind is getting closer to the universal objective of reducing poverty to its barest minimum."

He urged the NCS to keep playing a very critical role in this regard, observing that Computers are the main tools in ITs, which are the key drivers for economic growth and national prosperity.

Ohakim observed that he was encouraged and not surprised that NCS member companies have made positive impact on the development of computer hardware and software as well as capacity and diffusion in the country.

"I am glad to note that your members now produce branded Personal Computers (PCs) that compare in standard and quality with internationally popular brands. We now have local brands like Zinox, Omatek, Speedstar, Brian etc that can match international brands like HP, IBM, Dell to mention a few," he asserted.