FG to build $1bn ICT company –Minister

The Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, has said at the weekend in Ibadan that the Federal Government is ready to invest $1 billion dollar in the ICT sector.

He said it was part of government’s efforts in diversifying the Nigerian economy.

The minister who stated this while delivering a paper tagged: “Jobs Nowhere But Jobs Everywhere: ICT to the Rescue of Unemployed Graduates and Youths’, at the Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan, said the Federal Government was in talks with major stakeholders in the ICT sector to create more jobs in the country.

The minister further pointed out that arrangement was in top gear to build a national ICT park and exhibition centre in Abuja as part of preparations for the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Shittu, who recalled President Muhammadu Buhari’s state of the nation address in 2015, where the President identified ICT as a crucial pillar to leverage on job and wealth creation as well as on the economy, disclosed that government was prepared to use ICT to foster youth empowerment and development by way of giving of grants, loans, sponsorship and financial support, among other innovative schemes to lucrative business ideas.

The minister, while bemoaning the level of youth unemployment, blamed it on several factors, which he stated have contributed to the failure to provide students the appropriate skills to make them fit-for-purpose(employable) in the 21st century.