Nigeria does not challenge its young people. I am not sure how we can rise as a nation if we do not change that playbook. After my well-received interview on the NTA, a senator called me on one statement I made therein. I have noted that Nigeria lost an adjacent war, when we failed to use the paralysis of Boko Haram and Insurgency to build a security sector which could export tools, know-how, technologies, etc at least to other African nations.
So, we fought the war and are still fighting, but no local economic capabilities have been built from that war. My postulation was asking the military to spend 20% of all non-payroll budgets on local companies. Possibly, that would have seeded a new sector. But nothing like that: we get the money from the federal budget, and we send it to France, Israel, Turkey, etc.
Now, take that thinking to the evolving eNaira: the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has chosen Bitt Inc, a company in the Caribbean as a technical partner. That was another missed opportunity. While I understand the technical challenges, and the necessity of speed, the fact remains that the pockets of startups which went down after the CBN cryptocurrency technical ban, could have provided technical capabilities for this project. Today, we have to go to the Caribbean (a great place of course) to get experts!
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Just think about it: if the military commits to spend 20% of its non-payroll budgets on local companies providing services to the defence sector, many Nigerians in Boeing, Raytheon, etc will resign and come home to set up feeder companies because there is an assured market of billions of dollars. If CBN follows that roadmap, there are Nigerians who will come along for its project, just as India is doing by building its own tools with its own people.
You cannot be fighting for Naira in the forex market when we continue to import technical partnership in areas Nigerian companies and Nigerian people can be given opportunities. It is not only factories that must source raw materials internally, CBN and government agencies have obligations to do so.
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The CBN listed technological competence, efficiency, security, interoperability and experience, as factors that informed its selection of Bitt Inc as technical partner. Depending on where you stand on the equator, it made sense but at the same time self-indicting. I think the defense is very weak in many respects.
Digital currency is not yet a mature technology, so it punctures the argument of competence and experience, you are not building a product that will compete with the world’s finest, it’s a national product, so if we cannot experiment and even make mistakes on that, where else can such be entertained? The speed of launch is self-inflicted, nobody gave the CBN an ultimatum on when to launch, so we have the leeway to build and perfect, before setting out for public adoption.
For a private company, it’s not something to play with, because if you have built anything deeper in the tech space here, you will realise that local talent is in short supply; the tech behind most of the start-up brands we admire today wasn’t developed here. But we are talking about relatively new technology for the public, funded by the government, it offers us the best opportunities to test our capabilities, unfortunately the CBN couldn’t practise what they preach.
While it’s imperative to buy local rice, use local cement, wear local fabrics, it’s also very much imperative to use locally sourced talents and technologies where it matters most.
God bless you
“While it’s imperative to buy local rice, use local cement, wear local fabrics, it’s also very much imperative to use locally sourced talents and technologies where it matters most. ” – eziokwu, gaskiya, otito
Am so grateful for the insightfulness of your write. That local rice versus local tech is a good example. God will help us lead our riders right. Even a football coach in this country will go abroad and look for ready materials bring them into the country on Friday night, give shirts and file them out on Saturday noon and we get wishie washie national teams, so painful, my adolescents sons don’t even know who the captain of our national soccer team is, talkless of who the Nigeria permanent ambassador to UN is, this points to loss of interest in the nationality, until forthright people gets the lead, these negativity may not reverse.
The people making the decisions are already in their 70s. To even consider going into crypto is a welcome development.
Let them give it to whosoever they wish, at least, it will help other startups gain ground and take over in the nearest future.
If we don’t allow them (FG) to give it to a foreign organisation and make their own money from it, they will continue to kick against the idea.
Half bread is better than none
Nigeria government is wasting money outside, maybe they are doing this for their pocket I don’t know. If only Nigeria want to compete and not just want to be follower they would have try out inksledger financial system, the first Blockchain and best built by Nigerian. The only Blockchain and Cryptocurrency that can end poverty in Nigeria and any country with a lot of features, equitable distribution of wealth, giving of every Nigerians universal basic income, something that has not been done before in era of Blockchain.
They can try this out and see if it have positive impact in the Society and or also solve institutional financial problem.
Nobody is chasing Nigeria government they should explore local talent and experiment with all the Blockchain developed by nigerian, call out all the Crypto incline people in Nigeria to bring ideas and presentation, they should hold live conference for all of them. Let see what they get for us.