Computer Resource Centers in Nigeria

TSS just finished successfully opening the first High Tech Community Resource Center in Nigeria. We used our Video communication equipment in one training room with the First Lady, Ambassadors, Ministers talking to the President and faculty of North Carolina Central University. In another room we had blind and handicap students demonstrating our Enabling Technology room to everyone and in the other training rooms we had students using our multi-media CD-ROMs, learning how to use the computers. Here is an Article from the Nigerian News paper "This Day"

The first United States -Nigerian Community Resource Center (CRC) named after Chief Bola Ige was on Tuesday, February 19, 2002 launched in Abuja.

President Olusegun Obasanjo who was represented by the Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Turner Isoun, said that the decision to name the Abuja CRC after the late Minister of Justice was most gratifying.

He noted that the late Bola Ige deserved the honor because was "one of the major advocates of the need on African Information Technology Program and deployment of IT for the determination of information. And contributed immensely to the development of the IT bill, which is soon to be presented to the National Assembly."

The President thanked the officials of Education for Development and Democracy (EDDI) for sponsoring the project and noted that the initiative, demonstrated once again commitments to promoting democracy and governance through the platform of community enlightenment and civil orientation.

He expressed hope that the US government, which would establish more Community Resource Centers (CRCs) in each of the six geo-political zones of Nigeria, starting with Abuja, would help promote democracy in Nigeria.

President Obasanjo said he was informed that EDDI has committed about $4.5 million to the project and added that by citing the project at the Women Development Center, America has demonstrated her characteristic gender sensitivity, which he noted is worthy of emulation.

He also reminded that the project, which is based on the department of the Information Technology, would certainly provide an enabling environment for all stakeholders to contribute to the development of what he called a critical area of national development, which is a moral tool for progress.

He reiterated his administration's commitment "to the development of Information Technology Centers in order to make Nigerians globally competitive and be able to recognize the need to empower our youths with Information Technology skills in order to make them more useful to themselves and the nation," he said.

The President assured that EDDI, which was conceived in 1998 with hope that the strengthening of educational system in African countries, would promote participatory democracy and obtainable democracy to lead to sustainable development.

In her speech, the First Lady Mrs. Stella Obasanjo gave a little history of how she met with the co-coordinator of EDDI, Dr. Sarah Moten last year. Mrs. Obasanjo said Dr. Moten gave her a hint of what EDDI was about to do in Nigeria, "but I could hardly envision a project of the scope and significance that we are witnessing today," she said.

She also thanked the government of the United States for the project, which she believed "will soon become a major cornerstone on which stand the cordial and friendly relations between Nigerians and the people of the United States of America."

As expected, Mrs. Obasanjo said she was excited about the opportunities that the center was designed to provide for women as she noted that "Nigerian women have always shouldered the lion share of responsibility for the physical, emotional and intellectual growth of our children.

"Now, we have a reliable partner in this center, which will provide us with the relevant skills to enhance our participation in civic activities, as well as improve on our ability to contribute more and more to national development."

She expressed her gratitude for the establishment of an enabling technology room, which was named in her honor. She said that the room represented "a new hope for individuals with various forms of disability..." and hoped that the Bola Ige Information Technology center would work with the child Care trust to design special training schemes for physically handicapped children.

The US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Howard Jeter, in his speech, thanked the widow of the late Minister of Justice, Hon. Justice (Mrs.) Atinuke Ige, for allowing them name the first CRC after her husband. Mrs. Ige came to the occasion with other members of the Ige family.

He described the late Ige as "a man of great integrity, deep commitment, courage, and unquestioned dedication to Nigeria and its people".

His eloquence, he continued, "resonated much beyond Nigeria and he was an internationally-recognized legal scholar, with profound commitment to the rule of law and the quest for justice".

"Chief Bola Ige was a treasured friend who always treated me with the greatest kindness; he was a friend to the United States and we greatly value his wisdom. By bearing his name, I hope that this first Community Resource Center will reflect Chief Ige's spirit of cooperation, his talent for building enduring human relationships, and his boundless quest to promote the welfare of fellow Nigerians."

Explaining, Jetter said that the launching of the Bola Ige ITC was a fulfillment of a promise his country made in August 2000 to establish six information technology Community Resource centers in Nigeria, one in each of the country's six geo-political zones.

The centers, he said, "will be places of great versatility: places to teach and to learn, to research and to study. Places where special distance learning courses can be taught; places for desk-top publishing and digital video 'conferencing' and places where broadband telecommunications facilities will be available and where all of the skills necessary to access these service can b acquired".

Furthermore, Jetter suggested other possibilities that the center could render. Like imparting computer skills to the victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, special courses on criminology for Nigerian law enforcement officials through distance learning or set up a special teleconferences on bio-technology and agricultural production between Nigeria and American scientists and experts; students, academics, business people and government officials.

In addition, the International Book Bank of Baltimore, Maryland has donated about 23,000 new books to the six CRCs. Out of the 23,000 books, the CRC Abuja has received more than 2,000 books and the books are expected to be shared equal among the six centers and their partnering institutions.