Over two weeks after a nationwide labour strike aborted its National Conference and AGM, the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) today, held its programme in Abuja asking that government paid more attention to software development.

Pix: President of NCS Nwannenna flanked by Information Minister Chukwuemeka Ike (left) and the President of the CBN Dr Gabriel Obi.

And government itself accepted that it had a problem on its hands. From the Senate President, Hon Adolphus Wabara, came a gruesome summation of the problem of financing software development. [Related Stories]

“The nagging problem facing the Nigerian computer programmer [is that he is] in an environment that lacks venture capital. High interest rates prohibit bank finance of such ventures which tend to have long gestation periods between conception and marketing”

Wabara’s statement was part of his opening address at this year’s event with the theme: “Indigenous Information Technology Capacity Development: A Veritable Source of National Income.”

With little prospect of quick re-coup of their capital, banks are shy of funding indigenous software developers who enjoy low market patronage.

But the NCS want the tide changed. The society wants the creation of an agency to focus on research and development in IT while the existing agency National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) focused on IT consumption.

The NITDA has been accused severally in the past by the NCS, the continent’s largest organisation of IT professionals, of failing to foster programmes round IT knowledge acquisition and diffusion.

The professional body has made strong case for the creation of both a Software Research and Development Council and a Software Development Institute.

But the NCS appear a little frustrated over government’s inability to respond to its requests as a way of moving the sector forward. The annual conference would be the third in a row held at Abuja, the country’s seat of power.

By convention, it is rotated from one city to another. The NCS President Dr Chris Nwannenna explained the reason.

“The analogy is obvious. Our constant searchlight is on Abuja, the seat of power. And if we continue to talk from this point it is because those we want to listen to us are within earshot from here.

“I think that we have talked sufficiently enough for us to get a response. Even if the response is to tell us to shut up, it will do.” More…..

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