The Centre for Information Technology and Development in conjunction with the Nigerian Communication Commission have expressed readiness to enter into partnership to bridge the digital gap in Kano.
Addressing staff and management of the Centre under the leadership of its Executive Director, Dr Yunusa Zakari Ya’u, who paid a courtesy call on the zonal office of the Commission in Kano, the Zonal Controller of the Commission, Alhaji Adamu Amshi, said the commission was aware of the ICT digital gap in Nigeria and particularly in Kano and that it was working to bridge the gap. According to him, the commission in its effort to bridge the digital divide, has carried out several interventions across the nation through its universal service provision fund, projects managed in coordinated ways and focused on realising outcomes, benefits and achievements related to the key objectives of providing universal access and service to underserved and un-served groups and communities across the nation.
To this effect, he said the Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta deemed it necessary and expedient to support such initiatives as supportive efforts to develop ICT in the country and especially in Kano state, adding that the commission has also approved the request to sponsor a quiz programme. In his remarks, CITAD Executive Director, Dr. Yunusa Zakari Ya’u said the Centre had been up and doing in finding ways and means of bridging the digital divide in Kano at a time when tens of thousands of secondary schools students in the state were far left behind for lack of access to computer and the inability to comprehend the nitty-gritty of its operations.
He pointed out that the mass failure recorded during the recent JAMB examinations have had a negative impact on students from the northern part of the country as a result of the inability of majority of them to have access to computers stressing that the business of conducting and sitting for the JAMB examination is purely based on the application of computer software.
He, however, stated that the partnership would go a long way towards bridging the digital divide for those lacking the opportunity to be computer literate in the digital age of applying modern means of communication stressing that with the NCC spearheading the effort,nothing would be left to chance in achieving the noble objective.
