OPS should drive convergence

The Organised Private Sector in the Nigeria’s Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sub-sector have been tasked to ensure that they are at the driver’s seat of the burgeoning convergence.

Head of Information Technology (IT) Unit at the Nigeria’s ICT Ministry, Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, gave this charge in Lagos, while speaking at the one-day Convergence forum with the theme

“Engaging New Services in a Converging Market.”

She said that the emergence of convergence does not have any two other ways by either being part of it or you are left out of the system.

She noted that though the ICT Ministry of date may not be what Nigerians expect, describing as a political move the mergence of the ministry.

“The merging of information and communications is political and would take time to come to realty,” she said.

Mrs. Odusote also called for abolition of statistic and design units in various ministries in the country, because according to her, IT is usually downgraded by placing it under this unit.

She stressed that the decision of the federal government to compute salaries have exposed lots of inadequacies in the system and have saved huge sums of money for the government.

He also urged ICT professionals to embrace politics so as to enable them go to the likes of National Assembly and contribute towards making relevant laws to position the nation in the comity of ICT nations.

For her convergence is very much in Nigeria and must be made to work through OPS initiatives that could overcome the hiccups and challenges the industry is facing, especially on power generation.

Also speaking at the event, chief executive, Disc Communication, Mr. Bayo Banjo re-echoed the concept that the government has no business being in business.

He pointed out that convergence is another way of telling someone that his technologies are becoming obsolete, stressing that convergence must be built on Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure.

“As far as convergence is concern we don’t have a choice, because convergence is clear such that a new stream would be taken by going online. So, the old system has become obsolete,” Mr. Banjo said, noting however, that without power, the dream would be disrupted.

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