Nigerian ICT Gurus: Mending of Systems Operation for Efficient Service Delivery in Nigeria

Nigerian ICT Gurus: Mending of Systems Operation for Efficient Service Delivery in Nigeria

Poor service delivery in a developing country like Nigeria is sometimes accepted as part of the norms. In this country, It is possible to spend hours waiting for a less than twenty minutes service and the service may be anything but qualitative and quantitative. When going to hospital, police station, court or patronizing for tailoring, carpentry services, etc, do not give yourself time because you will likely to be disappointed by the time the services are rendered to you. The ratio of “waiting time to service time” is best discussed as part of academic exercise in tertiary institutions but not as a performance indicator for service delivery of public and private agencies.

Service delivery is the ability of service provider to give service to customers or citizens with satisfaction based on speed, courtesy, quality and reliability. Service excellence means exceeding customers’ expectation and paying attention to his/her utmost satisfaction. Thus, service delivery focuses on expectations and needs of the clientele. Fundamentally, four major factors drive the citizens’ satisfaction with public service delivery; first, “timeliness” – satisfaction with the time it takes to be served, second, “outcomes” – getting what was needed at the end. The third “extra mile” – staff go extra mile to serve the clientele and lastly, “fairness” – making the clientele to feel being treated fairly. This is exactly what it means by service delivery, expected from responsible service providers – public or private. Services are provided to customers or citizens through system operation by the system managers. What is the percentage of citizens who are satisfied with services being provided by agencies such as hospitals, police station, schools, prisons, etc? Nowadays, withexponential increase of population in the country, it is difficult to achieve satisfying efficiency in system operation using traditional ways or methods.

Generally, service delivery to clientele is done through system operation. A system is described by Wikipedia as a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex/intricate whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning. A system can be as simple as   bathroom system or as complex as electorate systemor banking system and operation of such systems provide service.

Traditionally, system is manually operated and such traditional method ofoperation is embedded with many challenges such as manipulation, delay and other human imperfections.  In the 21^st century, Technology has changed the way systems are operated in an extraordinary way. It has allowed some systems operations or jobs to be mobile that were previously desk-bound, and enabled many workers to do their jobs from almost any location globally at any time. Whenever there is any kind of a ‘work revolution’, there is a related and required shift in skill sets. As technology evolves and replaces traditional ways of system operation, it does not only change the nature of the system, the work, including tools, practices and processes, it also impacts the skills required to adapt to this paradigm shift. However, original services that were created or enhanced by technology should be maintained while being delivered to clientele in most efficient manner.Among these innovations what is common is the ability to gather data, utilize and present something meaningful for the benefits of the citizens.The innovation of Consumer Electronics; electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in communications and office productivity. These are technological devices designed, manufactured and maintained to ease day to day activities of people in a modern/advance way. Nigeria has not been left behind in using the electronic innovation in spite of the current economic recession. Use of this initiative by Nigeria could drive economic growth and improve the quality of lives for the people by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. This effort is a courtesy of some Nigerian ICT gurus who have been consistently working to mend the systems operation in Nigeria.

In the forefront of this noble venture, EngrsMunir Ali Faki and Yakubu Ibrahim are assiduously making impacts through their firm, Cap-Project Engineering. Series of innovations were developed electronically using ICT for efficient system operation.To be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. Innovation involves deliberate application of information, imagination and initiative in deriving greater or different values from resources, and includes all processes by which new ideas are generated and converted into useful products. In business, innovation often results when ideas are applied by the company in order to further satisfy the needs and expectations of the customers.

Their first success story of the ICT gurus is the use of ICT for operation of Pension Commission of Nigeria (PenCom).  A biometric solution was developed to operate the new Nigerian Pension scheme under Federal Government. The project was successfully done linking all the six zonal offices to the head office in Abuja with the biometric solution on a virtual private network (VPN), with the successful implementation of the PenCom project it gave an edge to deploy similar solution of most of the PFA’s in Nigeria.

The second innovation, which was the most important in this country, was the development of card reader for Independent Electoral Commission {INEC) to successfully conduct 2015 election. To even high level Nigerian politician,   the fear of card reader is the beginning of wisdom and a confidence builder to ordinary Nigerian voter. Thecard reader was developed through integration of a real time biometric solution for Nigerian voter’s register. The project was the result of joint effort with another ICT outfit, Extra-Mile Synergy limited. When the innovation was presented to INEC, it was apparently a good opportunity for INEC to conduct free, fair and credible election that could be acceptable by both Nigerian voters and International organizations. The rest is now history as we witnessed the historic event in the nation democratic process.

Another outstanding innovation was developed for Kaduna Refinery Petroleum Company (KRPC) by the duo using biometric solution. They deployeda wireless palm vein access control using a FUJITSU US PATENT DEVICE, linked warehouses within a distance of 3 km, with a control at the security office. This provided a near perfect security services of the petroleum products of the KRPC.

The innovations have also reached out to the hospitality industry where they partnered with Hawthorn Suite, a US franchise chain of Hotels, ICT was deployed through installation and maintenance of hotels door locks, integrating it with CCTV, Intercoms, and overall ICT support services. The system builds a professional guests’ pass using gatewaywhere a guest could be charge to use a high speed internet, in addition to the compliment free service. Many hotels in Nigerian cities are successfully providing these efficient satisfactory services to their customers.

The innovative solutions for efficient system operation are similarly applicable to security and high technology sectors. For instance, the duo have developed devices such as Prijector,  a security device that can connect people and display their contents of any device via wireless connection on a TV or projector. Many other gadgets such as a rear view Holographic projection solution,cheap automatic gate control using biometric, RF Card, Key Pad or Remote Control are devices for remote system operation. The teams are still working to develop innovative solution to many day to day problems for efficient service delivery using the ICT. Areas that need to be covered are numerous such as:-

1.     Health Management System

2.    Revenue Generation using State Transport Authorities

3.    Revenue Generation using Mobile Abattoirs

4.    Waste Management system using Recycling Plant

5.    Advance advertisement system to improve revenue generation and marketing developments

6.    Smart city and related services such as:-

v  Smart Museums

v  Landmark app

v  On-the-go taxi ordering services

v  A meeting place with all relevant furnishing

v  Delivery services

v  Smart parking services

7.    School portal where opportunity for equal education is served

8.    Consumer Electronic Village Hubs (CEV Hubs)

9.    Portal for affordable farm produce direct from the farmers

10. Tax collection using NFC card

11.  Automated Toll Gates system using RFID

12. File tracking system in Ministries, Agencies and Departments of Government using RFID

13. National Saving Scheme with full automation

14. Automated land tax, ground rent collection using GPS e.t.c

While it is important to appreciate the deployment of ICT for system operation, but it is equally important that government should lead in this innovative venture. Nigerian cannot afford not to use this God’s given ideas to move the country forward.All hands must be on deck to use ICT solutions. Click to download newspaper version

Readers Comments

Readers Comments

Today is another time to attend to another cycle of reactions from readers of this column. The readers are passionate about how Nigeria fails to resolve its perennial energy crisis. Some months after publishing my two parts article “Use of Solar Energy in Nigeria: Efforts, Innovations and Missing Links”, readers kept on sending comments across the globe; some of the comments became personal chats between us but I think there is need to publish few of such comments. The readers reaction on the issue shows that Nigerians are truly worried that majority of the communities hardly enjoy electricity supply of five hours in a cycle of 24 hours. Hardly, one can find a community in Nigeria enjoying uninterrupted supply of electricity for a complete week in a month. Electric power is a major input to human productivity in today’s world; imagine the level of productivity in the country if electricity is made available, accessible and affordable to 80% of Nigerians. Small, medium and large scale Industries will be back to life, unit cost of manufactured products will come down, communication will automatically be enhanced and there will be improvement in all facets of human endeavors, thereby improving the economy. One ardent reader of my column share an abridged article he read on the use of Wind energy in Scotland and called on Nigerian authority to borrow leaf. Finally, a reminder; previous articles of this column can be accessed via my blog: www.breakthroughwithmkothman.blogspot.com

Happy reading

Use of Solar Energy in Nigeria: Efforts, Innovations and Missing Links

Dear Dr. M. K. Othman

Thanks for a well articulated article on the use of solar energy in Nigeria. There are many efforts across the nation to adapt use of solar energy but Government policy on solar is very ambiguous; we need a clear policy statement from the Nigeria Ministry of Power to guide other Government agencies to kick in the right direction. I hope relevant agencies will use the information provided in this article to move our country in the right direction towards a permanent resolution of energy crisis.

Ajayi Moses Olugbenga

Dear Dr. Othman,

Your analysis on the efforts made for uses of solar energy in Nigeria are corrects and I am impressed with the analysis. Despite these numerous efforts, there is no improvement in the power sector over the years, why? The answer can be linked to our problems in Nigeria; we lack the ability or refuse to implement government energy programme properly. Some of the programmes do not have component of sustainability after the intervention. And there are massive and endemic corruptions in the energy sector at various levels of government administrations for the years

OKEDIRAN Olumuyiwa Joshua

Dr. Othman,

Please, refer to your 2-part article on “Use of Solar Energy in Nigeria: Efforts, Innovations and Missing Links”, it is a very good analysis! Congrats!

Nicolino Christine

Well rounded analysis. Thumb up!

Shittu Suraj Bamidele

Dear Dr. M. K. Othman,

I have read your interesting article “Use of Solar Energy in Nigeria: Efforts, Innovations and Missing Links”, I begin to think, that Nigeria should diversify to look for all the promising and potential sources of renewable energy. Example “wind” is another very promising renewable energy source that can be tapped in Nigeria. I read an article in online paper on how Scotland's wind turbines cover all its electricity needs for a day. I am tempted to share the news with your readers in case; someone who can do something about Nigerian case will borrow leaf.

The paper reported that the winds tapped by the country boosted the renewable energy output to provide 106% of Scotland’s electricity needs for a day.  Across the year, wind and other renewable energy sources contribute over half of Scotland’s electricity needs. The Country’s Met Office sometimes issue a yellow “be aware” weather warning covering much of the country as wind speeds reached 115 mile per hour on the top of the Cairngorms and gusts of more than 60 mile per hour hit towns in the north. The weather brought travel disruption, with some bridges closed, ferries cancelled and trains affected but helped boost the country’s renewable energy production.

Turbines in Scotland provided 39,545 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity to the National Grid at one particular day while the country’s total power consumption for homes, business and industry was 37,202 MWh – meaning wind power generated 106% of Scotland’s electricity needs. This day was a Sunday, which was not a common happening. The paper quoted WWF Scotland director Lang Banks “While Sunday’s weather caused disruption for many people, it also proved to be a good day for wind power output, with wind turbines alone providing the equivalent of all Scotland’s total electricity needs”.  “This major moment was made possible thanks in part to many years of political support, which means that across the year now renewables contribute well over half of our electricity needs. “However, if we want to ensure we reap the many benefits of becoming a low carbon economy, we need to see this political support for renewables continue”. “We also need the Scottish government’s forthcoming energy strategy to set a goal of securing half of all of our energy, across electricity, heat and transport, from renewables by 2030.

“While it’s not impossible that this has happened in the past, it’s certainly the first time since we began monitoring the data in 2015 that we’ve had all the relevant information to be able to confirm it. However, on the path to a fully renewable future, this certainly marks a significant milestone.” Another expert quoted by the paper was Karen Robinson, of Weather Energy, said: “Electricity demand during weekends is usually lower than the rest of the week. “Nevertheless, the fact that wind power was able to generate the equivalent of all Scotland’s electricity needs shows just how far renewables have come.” “We remain fully supportive of low-carbon technologies, which offer a huge economic opportunity for Scotland and have a key role to play in our fight against the threat posed by climate change to our society and natural environment. “We have a clear policy for an energy mix to provide energy security for the future and will set out our ambitions for an integrated approach to low-carbon technologies within our draft energy strategy later this year. This will include exploring the option of setting a new renewable energy target.”

Nigeria is not Scotland and the wind speed has never reached 115 mile per hour, which is equivalent to 184 kilometres per hour but wind is another untapped source of renewable energy in Nigeria. From literature, the annual mean wind speeds in Nigeria range from 2 to 9.5 m/s capable of generating annual power density range from 3.4 and 520 kW/m². There are other sources of energy in addition to wind and we should exploit them. Government can exploit the renewable energy sources and promote their uses through the deployment of decentralized energy system. This can be done through massive utilization of renewable energy sources. Thus, renewable energy technologies can be promoted through deliberate government support to reduce the unit cost of renewable energy technology and make such technologies accessible to common Nigerians. Government should mount aggressive campaign for adapting and utilization of renewable energy technologies as well as training and retraining of manpower to manage such technologies. Again, government should formulate a policy aimed at capital development of concerned renewable energy technologies entrepreneurs by instituting effective liquidity instruments. These measures are by no means exhaustive but it is time for Nigeria to think and act along this line.

Dr. Yusuf M. Abdullahi

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology

Dear Prof. Othman

Your article on Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology is an excellent Paper with very important information on seed science and development as key steps of an efficient agricultural production. It is qualitative and educating article to the general readership. Bravo Prof. and congrats once more
Thank you,

Fernando E.

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology III

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology III

The improved varieties of cowpea developed and released by Ahmadu Bello University Zaria through the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) were code named SAMPEA. Within a span of three decades (1978 to 2008), the university had developed and released ten varieties; SAMPEA 1, 2, 3, 4, up to 10, respectively. The varieties were aimed at increased productivity and meeting some production challenges such as pests, diseases, low inputs requirements and adaptable to the environment. Cowpeas are highly venerable to diseases and attractive to pests, being crops with high nutritional values. As mentioned in the previous article, cowpea has significant percentage of protein and fat compared to cereals and tuber crops, which make the crops development more challenging. The varieties are resistant to many diseases and pests such as bacterial blight, maruca pod borer, pod sucking bugs, bruchids and many other destructive microorganisms. Their maturity  period are of medium duration from 78 to 100 days. the potential yields of these varieties ranged from 1.2 to 2 tons per hectare. This is much higher than the average estimated yield of 0.483 tons per hectare for cowpea in West Africa as reported by Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The sizes of seeds for these varieties are diverse from small size seed to large size while the colors are white, brown and dark brown, respectively. Among these varieties, however, SAMPEA 8, 9 and 10 were developed as special varieties through active collaboration between International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and IAR/Department of Plant Science, ABU Zaria. An International renown cowpea breeder, Prof. B. B. Singh led a team ABU Scientists; M. F. Ishyaku, O. O. Olufajo, A. A. Zaria, H. A. Ajeigbe, S. G. Mohammed and A. Y. Kamara developed the varieties. In addition to other features common to all the varieties (SAMPEA 1-10), an outstanding feature developed for the three these varieties is short maturity period as they could mature, from planting to harvest, within a span of 40 to 60 days. This unique feature has many advantages; first farmers can produce cowpea two times  in one season, wet or dry. Second, new improved cowpea can come to the market at the middle of wet season when  foods are generally scare and this can be comforting to farmers and rural dwellers. Third, the production of cowpea two times in a season increases cropping intensity by one hundred percent to farmers and land utilization.

The next set of cowpea varieties developed by ABU Zaria in collaboration with IITA and University of Agriculture Makurdi were SAMPEA 14 and 15. SAMPEA 14 is a special breed of cowpea as it has diverse and wide genetic background. It was developed out of crossing and backcrossing of many varieties including kamboinse local from Burkina Faso and Ife-brown from Nigeria among others. It is high yielding variety with an average of 14 seeds per pod and about 30 pods per stand. It has long peduncles that carried pods above the canopy. In addition, the variety is heat tolerance, drought tolerance, Striga resistance and Alectra resistance. This variety was released in 2011.  SAMPEA 15 is similar to SAMPEA 14 except that the seeds are pure white in color with black eye and its maturity period slightly longer than that of SAMPEA 14. The maturity period of the two varieties ranges from 70 to 80 days.

The other two mandate crops for IAR/ABU are groundnut and cotton. Groundnut originated from South America, but is now widely cultivated throughout the tropical, sub-tropical and the warm temperate areas. Groundnut is an economic crop and has many uses.  The haulms are important folder for livestock, especially, sheep and goat and in particular ram.  The plant, through its biological activities nitrogen fixation, is an important soil fertility conserver.  The nuts are consumed roasted, boiled or as confectionary, snack nuts, peanut butter or in cookies.  The nut is crushed to produce oil which is principally used for cooking.  Similarly, groundnut is also used for other industrial purposes such as; pharmaceuticals as carrier, cosmetics. It is also used for the production of margarine. The by-product, meal (cake) is used for both human and livestock consumption. The production of groundnut in Nigeria is largely a smallholder crop, grown under rainfall conditions in semi-arid areas.  Although it is grown in commercial farms in America and Europe, the developing countries, with their small scale production, account for over 95 of world groundnut area and 94 percent of production volume  as cited by some literatures.  Thus, production is concentrated in Asia and Africa.  Asia accounts for 60 and 70 percent of world area and product respectively.  India (35% area 28% production) and China (17% area, 34% production) are the major producers in Asia.  Africa accounts for 35 percent of the global area but only 21 percent of the production level.  The major groundnut producers in Africa are Senegal, Nigeria and Sudan. Nigeria was at one time, the leading exporter of groundnut in the world.  However, due to production and marketing challenges, Nigeria lost out to other countries and is currently not even listed among the world medium exporters of this important commodity.  China, USA and Argentina are the current top World exporters of groundnut.

In the last three decades, ABU Scientists have developed four prominent varieties of groundnuts; SAMNUT 21, 22, 23 and 24. These varieties are high yielding (2-2.5 tons per hectare) compared to the yield (0.3 tons per hectare) of local varieties. They are resistant to common diseases and pests such as roselle, leaf spot, etc, good shelling percentage (60 - 65 %) and early maturity. They are adaptable to Sahel and Sudan savanna areas, known for groundnut production since colonial era.

Cotton is another important cash crop, an exclusively major input to textile industry whose usage to mankind for clothing and other domestic purposes has no boundary. It is a crop with high global market demand at all times. ABU has recorded significant breakthroughs in the development and breeding of improved cotton seeds for the last thirty years. SAMCOT 1, 2, 3 and 4 were successfully developed and released to the relevant stakeholders by the university.

All these achievements were made by IAR/ABU to strengthen the Nigerian seeds industry so as to meet the national seeds requirements as a prerequisite for the development of agriculture. The university follows the standard protocol for the development and breeding of all the mentioned varieties of seeds. The seed development protocol is a herculean one, It  requires intellectual capacity, materials and time. For instance, to develop an improved seed requires development of breeder's seeds, foundation seeds and out-growers' seeds  before reaching out to the market for farmers. Each step takes two to three years consecutively making the development of improved seeds to reach ten years or more. Despite all these outstanding achievements recorded by the university over the years, no significant recognition was accorded to the university except a letter of commendation from Kano state government for the development of cowpea at one time. Again, many Nigerian farmers are not aware of these feats and even those aware are hardly accessible to these improved varieties. Why?  This is because most of these varieties are not popularized due to poor funding of the extension services in the country.  Further, seed materials are often very expensive, placing poor farmers at a disadvantage. Large seed companies concentrate more on big farmers that have large demand for seed, especially hybrid maize and vegetable seed. They often ignore seeds with thin profit margins, such as self-pollinated crops, like wheat, rice and cowpea groundnut, because farmers often save the seeds from one harvest to the next and because proprietary laws are missing or not enforced. Again, the seed industry in Nigeria is faced with a myriad problems. Prominent among the problems are a lack of seed policy and inadequate support for seed industry development, long delays between variety development and variety registration and release, the inadequate involvement of farmers in participatory varietal selection, leading to low adoption of released varieties, a poor enabling environment for private sector participation and survival, weak regional seed trade development and seed market information systems.

In an effort to improve the availability of improved seeds to the farmers, Non-governmental organizations funded the community seed production projects as a strategy to ensure the high adoption of released varieties in the country. The goal of NGO’s intervention in the seed industry was to assist farmers and seed producers to develop sustainable seed production systems, capable of providing a regular supply of high quality seeds of superior varieties to the farming communities.

The support from the Network was through the continuous supply of improved germplasm adapted to local conditions, technical assistance with seed production, training, provision of credit in the form of inputs for seed production, and promotion of improved OPVs to encourage adoption.

Finally, government and its agencies should recognize extra ordinary efforts made by Nigerians and Institutions as encouragement for achieving more. Agricultural extension system must be supported to achieve foods security in this era of population explosion, which the country is witnessing. (With additional report from Dr U. Alhassan)