ICT Minister Speech Social Media Conference

7/31/2019 ICT Minister Speech Social Media Conference

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WELCOME ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE HONOURABLE MINISTER OF

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, MRS OMOBOLA JOHNSON AT THE NEW

MEDIA AND GOVERNANCE: TOOLS AND TRENDS CONFERENCE HOLDING ON THE

14TH

AT THE YARADUA CONFERENCE CENTER

Protocols

Today, the YarAdua Foundation is holding a conference on new media tools for

facilitating good governance. The proceedings of this conference over the next

two days will no doubt stimulate our minds as we focus on how new media tools

and trends can help improve governance in Nigerian.

New media facilitates on demand access to content, anytime, anywhere on any

digital device and has resulted in what is now referred to as the democratisation

of information. This has only been possible through the evolution of ICTs,

especially the emergence and the ubiquity of the internet.

Innovative new media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs are giving a

voice to people who traditionally wouldnt have a voice and enabling people

freedom to air their views and opinions on how they are being governed and how

they would like to be governed.

New media played a critical part in our last elections, the civil unrest that followed

the planned removal of the fuel subsidy, the UK youth riots in 2011 and the Arab

spring to name a few. Recall that President Goddluck Jonathan made use of this

platform and declared his intention to run as president back then on Facebook

much to the approval of millions of young and digitally aware Nigerians.

These significant events have clearly demonstrated that governments cannot

afford to ignore new media. This is becoming THE way in which citizens want to


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communicate and engage with government and with the outside world. Its

instantaneous, it can be anonymous, you can do it anywhere and at any time and

it is cheaper than many other forms of communication.

45 million Nigerians have access to the internet, more than the number ofNigerians that have access to or own broadcasting devices such as radios and

television. As ICT infrastructure is rolled out and gets more robust more Nigerians

will have access to cheap and fast internet. This is an extremely instructive

statistic because what it means is that in the very near future, the cheapest and

fastest way for the Nigerian government to provide information to and engage

with citizens will be through the leveraging of new media tools.

Permit me to dwell for a few minutes on what the Nigerian government is doing

to embrace these new media tools.

The ongoing Ministerial platforms that are being delivered in the traditional

manner with Ministers making presentations is signficantly enhanced by the

adoption of new media tools that provide interactive and instantaneous feedback

on achievements of government as presented by the Ministers. I understand that

even before presentations are completed, the tweets are flying, facebook pages

are buzzing and questions are already coming in via email. What an exciting way

to engage and dialogue.

Federal government, through the Ministry of Communication Technology is

committed to enhancing the institutional presence of government on the

internetso that all Nigerians regardless of their social or demographic status can

have access to government information and services. Today only49% of

government MDAs have a functioning publish and inform website. We are

currently in the process of developing a national internet based portal that will

facilitate easy access to government information through publish and inform

websites and we have set ourselves a target of December 2014 for every single FG

MDA to have a functioning publish and inform websites domiciled on this portal.

This national portal will provide structured information about government

activities and services and two way communication on various social media


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platforms to facilitate engagement. For those citizens that do not have access to

the internet but have another digital device such as a mobile phone, government

contact centres are being established primarily as call centres that will provide

information on government services to citizens in english and of course a number

of local langauages. We will pilot two centres before the end of the year or early

2013.

The publishing of the federal budget on the internet led to an unprecedented and

informed commentary on the budget and gave Nigerians a real insight into where

money was being spent. Not because this was the first time but because digital

awareness was greater and access to the internet had increased. But the budget

in its raw form can only really be understood by economists and the more

financially aware of us.

This is where the developer community comes in and I hope that they are well

represented in this room today. Youbudgit.com a project of the co-creation hub

rose up to the challenge of turning data into information. An internet based

application developed by this group of young developers took literally the

hundreds of pages and thousands of numbers in the national budget and

represented them as pictoral graphs and charts that explained the numbers in a

much easier to understand manner than was originally published. Many stategovernments are beginning to publish their budgets on the internet taking an

important step towards financial transparency and accountability.

The national assembly recently passed the freedom of information which

essentially commits government to providing non classified information to

citizens on demand. More data sets will be published on the internet but we need

time to convert them to an appropriate digital format to facilitate easy access and

manipulation. As we provide data sets we hope that the ecosystem of developers

will take up this data much in the way that the co creation hub has done and turn

it into useful information for citizens.

We are also committed to supporting the developer community in taking up this

challenge through the increase in the number of ICT incubation centres in the

country. These centres will provide testing support for developers, give them


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access to cutting edge market research, provide mentoring and business

development advice and importantly grants and see funding to facilitate the

migration of an idea to a commercially successful or socially beneficial application.

Two incubation centers that will foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the

ICT sector will be established in Calabar and Lagos before the end of this year.

Beyond providing relevant, accurate and up to date information to citizens, the

federal government is also committed to increasing the delivery of government

services online.Only about 3% of MDAs allow transactions through their websites

eg the Passport office and visa procurement in some of our embassies offshore. A

number are in the pipeline income tax payment. We are in the process of

identifying 15 20 new services and processes that can be delivered online and

will have a major impact on citizen service delivery. These will be the processes

that will be piloted this year.

Leveraging of and engagement with new media is a powerful new way of

improving transparency and governance. I have laid out just a few ways in which

federal government is planning to do this. I hope that this conference will result

in amongst other things useful, practical and implementable action points for not

only government but the rest of society to engage with new media in a way and

manner that will encourage transparency, improve governance and make Nigeriathe great nation that it deserves to be.

I welcome you all and wish you fruitful deliberations.

Thank you

Omobola Johnson

Honourable Minister of Communication Technology


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May 14th

2012

ICT Minister Speech Social Media Conference

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