Philip Atume

An ICT specialist Mr. Jacob Edo, has said it is going to be difficult for the present Nigerian civil service to achieve a lot because they are still carrying out their operations using the analog system.

Speaking as a guest on the programme “Today on STV,” Edo said the civil service still does their operations, using the archaic and analog system, which was inherited from the British.

He said further that, “Today the British have digitalized their system and the Nigerian civil service is yet to streamline or reengineer the basic process.”

He said when an individual goes to a government office, he expects to get some form of basic service level agreement as a citizen; and if the service level is not attained, action should be taken.

He said also that government has done a lot and has invested in ICT, but the proper approach has not been taken.

He stated that Lagos state is doing very well but they are not there yet; because the justice system for example should be digitalised; at least at the state level, so that people can file things faster.

He said everything the private sector wants to do still lies on the public sector, when both of them are compared.

He said there should be some national data base of some sort whereby Nigerians need to know when their driver’s license expires, not only the national identity card system.

He also said, that such idea makes the job of the police man on the street easy because he just look at the plate number of a vehicle and tell the validity of the driver’s license.

He stressed that Nigerians are faced with a number of problems like: dependence on oil, urbanization, population, huge unemployment and recession.

 He said Nigerians should start talking or else they will be in for serious trouble.

He stressed further that the civil service is currently porous and the federal government spending has to be monitored; giving an example that Nigerians don’t know where the federal government is buying tissue paper from.

He said there are so many advantages in moving from analog to digital because the use of paper would be put aside and it will create more employment for people.

He also said when Nigeria moved to the telecommunications sector, white collar jobs were created and not even blue collar jobs.

He concluded with a call for a change in the whole system, stressing that digitization of the public civil service will bring a lot of job gains and thousands of graduates out there can be trained to benefit from it.