Technology As A Catalyst Conference Organized By Perchstone and Graeys

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“On our smartphones, we can search apartments, perform bank transactions, book a taxi, order food, buy clothes, invest in a joint farming venture, monitor traffic, book a flight, while learning an indigenous language. It is then safe to say that technology is the future for man, business and governance, hence, the need for both private and public sector to work collaboratively for survival.” 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, AT THE TECHNOLOGY AS A CATALYST CONFERENCE, FEDERAL PALACE HOTEL, LAGOS, ON 5^TH OCTOBER 2018.

Our friends and colleagues at Perchstone and Graeys deserve our commendation for providing this timely and important platform for the dialogue on technology and the ease of doing business.  We are, without necessarily stressing the point, in a pivotal season in history.

Over 55% of the world’s population has instant access to the Internet, and the numbers grow daily, and that number is growing in the hundreds of thousands every day.  The digital revolution the third and fourth industrial revolution are unfolding with blinding speed before our very eyes. So every day, some seismic shifts occur in the way we do business, culture, and even politics on account of this revolution.  And at the core of this revolution, as we have already been informed, is communication.  And communication technologies are evolving ever so greatly.

The season is pivotal because not only has technology disrupted the manner of doing business, the pace of commercial activity is radically altered, businesses of any size, anywhere in the world are linked into a universal environment exposed to competition on a nanosecond to nanosecond basis. But perhaps of greater moment for us at a conference like this is how to create the new superstructure for this new world, especially in our own environment, here in Nigeria.

Many of the well-known business protocols are becoming obsolete, regulations in the financial space are also becoming outdated, intellectual property and transnational business protocols are not only far behind even when they are amended, but they are also soon becoming outdated. The legal and regulatory infrastructure for doing business faces its own epiphany.

So the focus of this year’s TAAC Conference, the Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria, could not be more appropriate.  Both the public and private sectors have a role to play, but the greater responsibility obviously lies with the former. The key in this brave new world is collaboration. This was the rationale for the establishment of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC).

A forum where the public and private sector could collaborate in the objective of removing delays and restrictions that come with doing business in Nigeria and making the country a place where you can start, sustain, and grow a business. PEBEC has formulated and implemented initiatives essentially relying on technology, to reduce the time taken to obtain pre-investment approvals, and property registration, and effecting internal and external trade processes.

PEBEC is not the only adaptation mechanism we have been able to employ to reposition Nigeria as an important player in international commerce. With technology, Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of the Federal Government and now some State governments have been able to reduce operational cost, reduce corruption, and revitalize participation and investment in numerous sectors of the economy.

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has for instance, successfully and seamlessly automated majority of its services and processes; resulting in a reduction in time for filing Corporate Income Taxes from 14 days to 72hrs.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has been able to clear a backlog of over 5,000 outstanding NAFDAC applications using technology solutions. And this is critical, especially for SMEs that have been held back for so long on account of the time it takes to register with NAFDAC.

In the energy sector, the introduction of electronic application and approval for new connections to the power grid has produced a reduction in the timeline for new connections by 147%.

The National Collateral Registry (NCR) is another example. Through the implementation of a modern, web-enabled National Collateral Registry, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been able to aggregate over 530 financial institutions with over 30,000 financing statements valued at over N620 billion. You have already heard in some detail, the operations of our biggest ongoing government technology project, the digital identification of all citizens and legal residents on a harmonized platform.

Nigeria will have the largest digital database in Africa, and only second in the world to the Aadhaar, the Indian digital identification system. The opportunities all around are huge. From the enhanced ability to provide accurate analytic data for FinTech services to content delivery services to individuals directly on the assurance of credible credentials, but perhaps more importantly, planning on human development, especially education and health care, jobs also for a population that will be the third largest in the world by 2050.

A key deliverable of the Digital Identity Project is to develop updated international standard cybersecurity, data privacy and confidentiality.  And all of these are around policies that must prepare us for the expected challenges that will come as part of a digital economy.

We fully understand, and I refer to the Federal Government and all of our private sector collaborators, the importance of a data-driven economy and as such, huge investments, huge time and energy are being directed to digitizing government data today.

FEC has recently approved the e-government master plan and NITDA in collaboration with galaxy backbone barely two months ago commenced the implementation of the interoperability framework that will provide a shared platform for the use of MDAs. So, we are the point where we are ready to go with our shared platform so that all the MDAs can see each other on the same platform.

I have no doubt the many proponents of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be excited about the immense data that will be available once they fully begin to deploy all of the resources around that digital identification.

I want to say though just before I go to public sector and private sector collaboration that the biggest gain for us as public sector and perhaps also as a nation, is the way technology has helped us to deploy our Social Investment Programme.

So from hiring over 500, 000 young men and women under the N-Power project (the N-Power project is a programme for young graduates who are out of work or have no work), one of the things we do is that we provide each of them with a device such as the iPad and others.

That device has a lot of information and educational materials; some on entrepreneurship, some on code writing and several other different disciplines.  Now, what we have been able to do with N-Power was first to demonstrate that we could actually hire 500,000 people, we started with 200,000 and now have engaged an additional 300,000.  All online, using our platform, each and every one of them was actually tested, all online.  Each of them chose a particular device that they preferred.  We gave them the choice of devices from Samsung to some of the other names, especially the local ones.  And they chose online.

We pay them through a payment system, we communicate with them through our open portal in various ways, all these possible because of technology.

If some of us would recall a very tragic situation that occurred, when the Immigration Service was trying to hire 10,000 people, several stadia in the country were filled with young men and women looking for opportunities when it occurred.  Today’s demonstrable shows that we don’t need that to hire 500,000 people.  Jumoke was talking a few minutes ago about the TraderMoni Scheme, where we are looking at giving micro-credit to 2million petty traders.  That is also possible because of technology and we have been able to deploy very rapidly across the states, enumerate across the states, ensure that we have data on each and everyone of these individuals with photographs, where they are, with GPS locations and all that, All on account of technology.

This is the same with our Conditional Cash Transfer as well, where the target is to reach a million of the poorest households in Nigeria.  We are partnering with the World Bank on this.  So far, we have deployed almost 500,000 and all of this in the deepest hinterland of Nigeria.  We have been able to reach people through mobile telephony and the various platforms that have become available to us.

These are all on account of technology and there is no going back.  Everything is going to depend, to a large extent, on how we are able to deploy technology, especially as we address concerns around human development, concerns around education, around healthcare.  There is no way in the coming years that we will be able to build enough classrooms for the number of children that we must put through school.  There must be ways of deploying technology not only to train teachers but also to educate our young men and women all over the country at a place that will match the population.  Of course, you know that population is simply expanding at a frightening proportion as the years go by.

A fundamental pillar of our economic plan is to ensure that the private sector leads business.  That is so important to us, that business and commerce are led by the private sector and that all that government is required to do, is to provide that environment for the private sector to lead business.  To do so effectively, the sector must be involved in policy formulation. We realized that only real players in the technology space would be useful in policy formulation given the complexities of the sector, hence the establishment of the Technology and Creativity Advisory Council. It is actually called the Technology and Creativity Advisory Group, which has the relevant regulatory agencies and industry players coming together to formulate policy on technology and creativity.

From the various meetings we have held, it is very obvious that we have the right mix of people.  These are young men and women who are actually engaged every day in some technology-related business or the other.  Many of them are able to come up with the kinds of policy innovations that will be able to address our concerns going forward, as you can imagine, a lot of the regular banks are jittery about the role FinTech companies are going to play in financial transactions going forward. The CBN itself is wondering how to regulate these new tech companies who are occupying the FinTech space.  And so our policy formulation group is an important group in helping to deal with questions around what should be the new regulatory space of FinTech companies and some of the transactions that are going on in the technology space today.  This is why collaboration is critical.

While the public sector has been able to score points over the last two years through the implementation of technology-driven solutions, the award for the  “Most Valuable Player” must go to our private industry leaders. The technology industry has been Nigeria’s highest increasing employer and our most improved economy contributor.

Nigerian corporations have been willing to dream big, to lead Nigeria’s technological revolution. The fact is that platforms needed to power the initiatives of the public sector have originated from our private sector partners. Thanks to Nigeria’s private sector innovators, living in Nigeria is increasingly becoming tech-based. On our smartphones, we can search apartments, perform bank transactions, book a taxi, order food, buy clothes, invest in a joint farming venture, monitor traffic, book a flight, while learning an indigenous language. It is then safe to say that technology is the future for man, business and governance, hence, the need for both private and public sector to work collaboratively for survival.

Let me again commend Perchstone and Graeys and its senior partner Osaro Eghobamien SAN. The firm was the only law firm that won an impact award at the first PEBEC impact awards, and for good reason. Osaro and his team have offered their time to assist public sector agencies in the arduous task of policy formulation and even lawmaking. I think you have shown that while the business of a law firm is to render and be paid for professional services, our more enduring duty is to actively work for an enabling regulatory environment beneficial to the entire economy and not just ourselves.

As you must know, the issues raised here are only the beginning of a rigorous process of ensuring implementation. From here it is literally back to the trenches for all of us. Working together, the digital future will yield its enormous benefits to all our people.

Thank you all and God bless Nigeria.