NCC boss Danbatta wants academic institutions to include ICT contents in their curriculum

The Executive Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Prof Umar Danbatta has advocated for a review of academic curriculum of most courses in our institutions to accommodate Information Communication Technology (ICT) contents.

This call was necessitated by the need to keep in tune with the realities of the digital age as more opportunities are opening up thanks to ICT.

Revealing this while making his speech at the first International ICT Capacity Building Conference organized by the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) in Abuja, Danbatta observed that global trends have shown that there are increasing job opportunities in ICT sector, stressing that the tertiary institutions have to play a vital role in bridging the current digital skill gap facing the country.

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He blamed the rising unemployment in the country on the inability of our economy to create jobs due to dearth of innovations and canvassed for a paradigm shift to make sure that Nigerian youths seize the future. He maintained that citadel of learnings, research institutes and innovations should be the driven force of this changes.

Danbatta praised the impact of NCC’s Advanced Digital Appreciation Programme (ADAPTI) in bridging the ICT skill gap amongst teaching and non-teaching staff of tertiary institutions in the country. He also revealed that DBI – a foremost information and communication technology training and education centre- had trained over 6,000 workers drawn from universities, polytechnics, colleges of Education, Medicine and other private tertiary institutions.

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In his own address, the administrator of DBI Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde expressed the fear that, if Nigeria fails to develop the requisite skills to fully exploit the digital age, it may miss out on the gains of the fourth industrial revolution. He commended the efforts of government and institutions for their massive investments in ICT infrastructures, telecommunications and IT systems but laments lack of commensurate investments in skills of people to enable optimal return on such investments.

“Considering the fact functioning in the digital society requires more than low -level skills, most Nigerian graduates can be considered as lacking in digital skills. This situation is potentially disastrous for the current generation of youths who will discover that the vast majority of jobs require e-skills when they arrive at the job market,“ said Adinde.