The National Coordinator, DIGITEST, Mrs Ibukun Odusote on Friday appealed to the Federal and state governments to groom children towards achieving a technology revolution for national development and rapid industrialisation.
DIGITEST is an ICT-based camp and competition for young people, a flagship programme of Digital Peers International that has run annually for 19 years in various states across Nigeria’s Geo-political zones and in some countries around the world.
Odusote made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of the closing of the DIGITEST 2019, an annual ICT Creative Camp and Competition for young techies.
The theme of DIGITEST 2019 for ages eight to 18 in Lagos is “e-Governance: Accountability, Creativity and Transparency (ACT)”. It began began on July 29 and ended on Thursday night in Lagos.
NAN reports that the event is a summer camp which provides a platform for impacting young people with leadership culture, entrepreneurship and cognitive skills, career guides, etc using Information and Communication Technology.
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Odusote told NAN that the children and youths of Nigeria had huge potential which all governments must explore to speed up the nation’s industrialisation.
She explained that for the past 19 years, DIGITEST had groomed children across the country with the help of its volunteers, adding that those children had brought some transformations into ICT.
She added that from inception, the team groomed children from the grassroots and appealed for state and the federal governments collaboration to take Nigeria to the deserved height in ICT evolution.
“I would want to pray and pray very hard that no government, no state government should ignore children in ICT.
“If they can invest a little on the children, they will get a lot more results than the regular things that we do because while they are playing and doing different kinds of things, once it comes to technology, you will see how Nigerian children behave.
`’We want to plead and beg our government, state governors, commissioners and permanent secretaries to invest in the children. It does not cost much to bring them to a programme of this nature.
“And this programme can be organised even in the various states. We are willing to come and drive it in any state or anywhere, what we want is to see transformation in the lives of our children,’’ she said.
She also advised parents to join in the campaign to develop local content in Nigeria by enrolling their children in DIGITEST programmes during the holiday periods.
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She restated the need for governments to embrace Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools that would enhance e-governance in the country.
Oduote said that lack of openness, transparency and accountability in governance hampered development and called for stakeholders engagement to drive open governance using technology.
According to her, if information technology is applied to many parts of governance and there is electronic governance, then the country will have less of stress.
Mr Segun Adeniji, the Permanent Secretary in the Lagos State Ministry of Science and Technology, told NAN that the government was doing a lot for science and ICT education development.
He commended the organisers of DIGITEST which, he noted, was a youth development agenda, saying that “this initiative is very timely in line with the agenda for youth development to compliment what the state government is doing”.
Adeniji said Lagos was collaborating with some private sector stakeholders to provide free internet facilities in some parts of the state and doing a lot to revolutionise ICT in schools and among youths.
Some of the participants at the annual creative camp and competition who spoke to NAN relished their experiences which ranges from apps developments, to recreational, motivational and educational activities.
The winners of completions went away with 22 laptops, phone books, tablets and other ICT tools. (NAN)