The Director-General (DG) of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Inuwa Abdullahi, has said the deployment of Nigeria’s digital media is not only an enabler but it is a potent key to the evolution of Nigeria’s digital economy.
According to him, digital media is one of the fastest-growing components of digital economy in the country with a lot of potentials stressing that this trajectory will stimulate job creation and foreign direct investment into the country thereby adding up to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nation with a projection to hit $30 billion by 2030.
Abdullahi, has advocated the deployment of digital media Digital as key enabler for Nigeria’s digital economy, stressing that digital media is, therefore, one of the key enablers of digital economy, adding that awareness of this is fundamental for the growth and development of any nation.
Abdullahi made the disclosure while playing host to the Commandant of the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information Lagos at the Agency’s Corporate Headquarters in Abuja at the weekend.
He said part of the agency’s digital drive is the flagging off the digital states training programme for 6,624 youths across 11 states of the country on digital literacy, content creation, productivity tools and digital marketing which can also be integrated to digital media.
He averred that “Social media has democratized access to everyone, which allows everyone to create content. The world’s largest media Facebook produces not a single content, but we create the content for them. We lack journalistic ethics in our operations. There is a need to use resources and tools at our disposal to help educate and empower people in the profession on journalistic ethics to leverage on Digital technology tools to do work better which will help cut down hate speech, fake news and misinforming the general public about certain issues.”
The DG applauded the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information for its relentless efforts towards educating journalists on the ethics of journalism towards news reporting which will bring about growth and development of the country.
The Commandant of the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information, Colonel Aliyu Yusuf commended NITDA for the various initiatives and programs it put in place towards the growth and development of Information Technology across the country that impacted Nigerians in different ways.
While going back to history, the Commandant commented that the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information was established in 2010 and is the only public Relations Information School in the Sub-Saharan African, which has trained public relations officers from the armed forces of Nigeria. The school has trained over 3,000 officers from the Navy, Airforce and Army to boost positive news reporting in the country.
Colonel Yusuf revealed that the visit is to seek collaboration in the areas of Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure and NITDA’s Digital Initiatives for the institution and also to key into the Federal Government’s Digital Economy drive for a better Nigeria and to change the way things are being done.
“Our Institution is trying to see that journalism attain its pace in news reporting and style of reporting information to the general public among others and also cut down the activities of fake news for the growth of the country,” he added