Digital Disasters come in shape and sizes. The entire nation may be plunged into a national emergency if her Central Bank Data is wiped off or infected by incurable worms and virus.

The aviation industry may find it impossible to guarantee the safety of incoming International flights if a major databank fails and may lead to the grounding of all operations at our airports. National Population and Census information may be affected. So would the digital health care and electoral records also be damaged.

The Stock exchange may collapse if there is no fail-over network. All these will present a nightmare to any nation in the knowledge society, if the e-Readiness plans are not well grounded. Speed is the common denominator for success in IT development and delivery.

However, experience has shown that we have been very slow and seemingly reactionary in the implementation process of the National Policy for Information Technology.

I feel greatly concerned as the pioneer and one of the originating champions of the National IT Policy that for more than seven years, no IT Framework and/or IT Infrastructure Security Bill has been passed! No Board of the established Agency is in place.

No IT Research Foundation is set up. No Software Corridor and/or knowledge Park established. Information Technology was entirely left out in the national development Agenda!
Due to the fact that the core features of IT is clothed with “speed”, it therefore becomes imperative to act fast and decisively to save this nation from the negative impact that will inevitably befall “Digitally porous” Societies of the future.

There is an urgent need for concerted drive for generating Information Technology awareness nationwide. IT diffusion should be multi-pronged with extensive coverage of the media, shared costs of training programmes for public and industry and access to necessary tools.

Implementation of demonstration and pilot projects that visibly improve the quality of services to public utilities is capable of bringing technology usage closer to the people.

bring forth the political will to shore-up IT development. Government is the catalyst. It is time to look at the overwhelming benefits of the Internet within the angle-view of e-business, e-education, e-governance and nanotechnology.

Computers and Internet connectivity in every school and college throughout the country within the next five years is feasible and should be implemented. We must prepare now to begin the shift from mass consumption to mass creativity and production - applying and using information technology. To do this, we must re-engineer the entire educational system and empower the youths with IT tools and facilities.

We must also start now to consciously prepare for the production of a minimum of 300,000 IT-related Engineering students annually from our universities and polytechnics. Core attention should be placed in Mathematics, English, Physics and Statistics. Needless to state that Research, Design and Development (RD&D) is fundamental and of strategic imperative.

A Digital Research Village is urgently needed. Special grants should be given to IT Companies willing to re-locate their operational sites or create new branches within the vicinity of our universities this is absolutely necessary, if we must bridge the gap of theory-only student material.

Establishment of IT Software Packs and production centers nation-wide should be encouraged as a matter of policy. And indeed, it is imperative that a National Centre for the study of Digital Sciences and future Societies be put in place as we approach the 21st century. Finally, experience shows that our major weakness is the inability to develop a winning teamwork culture.

A greater part of our time is used in discussing people rather than discussing topical issues scientifically and backing them up with proof of concept and action. Such attitudes, especially by professionals, retard IT development growth and sustainability.

If Nigeria lags behind in the global IT knowledge equation, that may represent the gradual disintegration of our people from the face of this planet! This is because the digital revolution holds the promise to change all things on the face of the planet earth and beyond: from the way we think, work, live and play. It is capable of re-focusing the mind set.

At the end of the tunnel, Digital Hostages would have been taken by knowledge-powered nations, while their victims will become the digital slaves of the century. We therefore, owe it a duty not only to ourselves and to future generations, but indeed to mankind to contribute meaningfully to the development of global informatics knowledge technology. Time is running out.

The new economic order for the 21st century will be innovation-led information technology. By implication, such an economy will demand new policies and new generation of political thinkers. Consider where we are coming from with a popular perception of Information Technology and computers as being in the incomprehensible domain of lab-coat wearing, bespectacled, techno-geeks.

Personal Computers and the power of self-expression that they represent have moved information technology from the padlocked tool shed in the backyard into our living rooms.

Our national leaders, key policy advisers, and educators must understand clearly that the new economic order will be driven primarily by information technology. To participate fully in this economy, we need first to understand its dynamics and then to consciously plan and implement policies that create the capacity to compete.