The Information Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN) on Thursday urged the Federal Government to incentivise technology to boost digital economy in the country.

Mr Lare Ayoola, Vice President of ITAN, made the appeal during a conference organised by the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA) in Lagos.

The theme of the event was ‘ Harmonising ICT Sub-Sectors Towards a Digitalised Nigeria’.

Ayoola said that the government needed to implement a comprehensive national ICT development plan that incentivised knowledge acquisition of decision makers and management in public and private sector that would lead to a surge in ICT development.

He said that for Nigeria to be completely digitised, the government must have a clear understanding of the value ICT brings to the nation to have a fast growing and better integrated tech ecosystem across the country.

“In Nigeria, ICT has grown into one of the largest sectors within the technology industry. It is therefore not surprising to see both the public and private sectors working assiduously to tap into the opportunities the space creates.

“The value and importance of ICT was recognized during the pandemic as the key infrastructure that kept businesses operating profitably and efficiently.

“The unwillingness, or inability, to adopt technology saw the end of many organisations during the pandemic.

“ICT is undoubtedly essential to the businesses and to the growth of the economy and is also a significantly large and critical part of any thriving organisation today,” he said.

He noted that a digitised Nigeria would facilitate the acquisition of data from the players in all the industry verticals at the lowest possible costs, with the best information security and also give rise to huge economic benefits that comes from big data.

Ayoola noted that over the years, ICT has contributed a lot to the economic gains of the country, creating so many opportunities which involve the provision of infrastructure for data collection, analysis, reporting and the adoption of new age technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data.

ICT has helped organizations, businesses and people to communicate better, cut costs, improve productivity, reduce losses, enable better information security and cyber security and improve research capabilities.

He said it was necessary for the government to tap into the opportunities the sector provides by giving incentives and creating an enabling environment for the technology industry to strive.