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| L-r Ilukwe, Dr. Mohamme, Dr. Gwandu, Hon. Gusau, Maj-Gen Onwuamaegbu |
The Minister of Defence, Dr. Bello Mohammed has applauded Ministry of Communications Technology and Galaxy Backbone on the hosting of the Defence Sector ICT Forum.
He gave this commendation
in Abuja during his speech as the special of guest of honour at the event.
The Defence Sector ICT Forum is a
Stakeholders Awareness Series (SAS) event hosted by Galaxy Backbone in
collaboration with the Defence Headquarters to engender dialogue on how
stakeholders in the Defence, Intelligence and Security community could leverage
the benefits of Information and Communication Technologies to meet contemporary
security challenges.
The latest forum has the theme, “Integrated ICT Framework for the Defence
Sector: An Imperative for National Security.”
He said that
the forum
could not have come at a better time in the history of this country.
“We are at a watershed in the history
of our nation. When a nation is at a crossroads, it is time to break barriers
and leap to higher grounds. The reason is because every nation is a bundle of
talent, intellect and creativity. These inner resources are hardly exploited or
harnessed to the full except there are challenges,” he said.
Mohammed described the current national
challenges the country is facing in the area of security as a call for all
stakeholders to task themselves to come up with novel solutions that bear
testimony to their God-given capacity to meet the challenges of the time.
He expressed the confidence that one of
the areas the country should be looking up to is Information and Communications
Technologies, even as he said the modern society is a knowledge society driven
by intelligence and information, therefore Nigeria’s defence and national
security sector cannot be different.
Further, he said that at critical times
in the history of nations, national security challenges had given the world
some of the best known technologies in the history of mankind.
“Ours should not be an exception. It is
time for us to begin to exploit new ways of tackling our security challenges”
he said.
The Minister expressed the view that
for Nigeria to overcome the present national security challenges all
stakeholders must work together to evolve new ways of doing things and build
capacity in modern information and communications technologies.
Dr. Mohammed said the forum was very
important as it brought stakeholders in defence and information technology
together, “so that we can talk to ourselves more closely and explore how we can
work together to meet our challenges. The reason is that security, like
knowledge, does not only have a military dimension but also a civil one.”
Nigeria, he said, needs to explore all
the dimensions in a manner that assembles all the building blocks from all
quarters at the least possible time and cost. Together, we need to examine
current technologies that will help us tackle current challenges and institute
the best ways not only of acquiring such technologies but also sharing them
among the defence and security community.
He additionally pledged his ministry
support for policy initiatives that could help the country benefit from a pool
of ICT resources, information, knowledge, intelligence and technologies.
Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D
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