Nigeria Plans To Establish Six ICT Varsities Across Geopolitical Zones

FEDERAL Government has disclosed its plans to set up not less than six new universities with specialty on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with the aim of closing the wide gap in digital technology in the country. According to the plans, the ICT university project will be spread across the six geographical zones with one to be situated ln each zone. 

The Minister of Communication Technology,  Barr. Adebayo Shittu disclosed this yesterday during a one day ICT sensitization workshop in Abuja for secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) organized in collaboration with TotalView Nigeria and the National Information Technology Development Authority (NITDA) adding that the idea was to meet the present demand by the digital age so as not to leave Nigerians behind.
Clarifying the rationale behind the proposed ICT university, the minister represented by Mrs. Monila Udo explained that the university when established would serve as a specialist institute for training of ICT teachers who would be acquainted with the required professional skills for teaching the generality of Nigerians across all the institution of learning.

“The ICT university will focus on training teachers that will in turn go to other schools to train other Nigerians. With modern facilities, it would do Nigerians  more favour to convert such an institute to a focused ICT university that will train teachers that will go into our schools to train our young people, and then over time graduate highly skilled technocrats that can compete in the global market and create jobs.

Speaking at the event, Mr. Charles Ozoemena, Managing Director of Total View Nigeria added that the overall aim apart from ensuring that the youth embrace ICT was strategically to strengthen the consciousness and understanding of ICT to the young students towards inculcating the modern medium of communication into them as a viable alternative to the existing system.