Abayomi Oloko, manager, Information Technology (IT), Nigerite Limited has identified “Big Data” as now an economic driver waiting to be harnessed in the country.
He however, noted that the private sector has the potentials to drive lead in the system as waiting for the government will lead to retrogression.
“Nigeria will be way behind other smaller countries if we continue to wait for the government” he said.
Oloko bared his mind during the recent International Data Corporation (IDC) Big Data Round table held in Lagos.
He said: “There are a lot happening in the country; the traditional way of thinking that technology will come from Europe is diminishing. Nigerians are far-way ahead of some of these countries we perceived as giants in technology or software. What we need is to harness what we have and make use of them.
“Big data is not actually software rather it is generated from unstructured sources like the social media. For instance, corrupt people are ‘tried’ in the social media. What we are discovering is that the social media is paying a lot of roles in the country, but who is ‘harvesting’ those data?
“People have installed capacity long time before the big bang in big data, what is happening is that some sectors like the Telecom are now drivers of big data. Those days you needed to have a computer, seat down and connect before you can surf the internet. In those days of cyber café, but things have changed, tremendously. Today, in the convenient of your room or can connect via your mobile phone to blog, twit, facebook commenting, updating, etc; so in as much as they are drivers for big data they lack the capacity for installed data”.
Speaking on big data and cyber security, he admitted that the avenue will exposes individuals and corporations to security issues.
“And there is no one stop shop for cyber security and that is where policies come in to play. For the public sector, it may not be able to be implemented. But for the need for the private sector cannot be over emphasized. There need to be policy in place to guide the operators’ actions and peg them to implementing standards,” Oloko said.
On the sectarian challenges, the Nigerite IT Manager said that, basically, Nigeria is being bombarded from the outside world.
“The perception that technology still resides aboard is a big challenge. There are too much happening at home; gurus who have never traveled outside the shores of Nigeria but they are operating at a very high level in technology world. So lack of understanding has led to non-recognition of these people by the society.
“Government seems to have the notion that the only way to create jobs is to start a new parastatal, but you cannot create even up to one percent of the job. But when the right policies are in place you end up creating different platforms for people who have the capacity to create the jobs in diverse ways in a very structured way,” he maintained.