Government officials are planning to defraud Nigerians again with “eGov Master Plan”
According to Galaxy Backbone and Ministry of Communication, Govt
plans to roll out its eGovernance platform very soon. It is based on a
MasterPlan that the Korean Governnent spent $500m to develop. Also,
Shittu the former Minister of Science and Tech had during the Launch of
the eGov Master Plan on 24 May 2019 said it would run on a NIPOST
platform and a private company has been incorporated to manage the
effort. This is shaping up to be another Mega Failure already. It is
built by government officials trusted to do the best for the country but
seem to lose sight of that fact somewhere along the way. There are so
many fundamental issues wrong with this; too simple and too many to
contemplate. Let’s look at a few
Firstly, have everything Nigerian eGov running on one single
platform is a serious security vulnerability. How? To incapacitate the
Nigerian government, all you have to do is to take that platform down
and it would be over. The single NIPOST platform would attract many such
attack attempts and eventually one such attack attempt would be
successful and bring down the entire Federal Government. Each Ministry
is supposed to be allowed to develop it’s own assets whilst all that is
developed is a framework for communication between the ministry
platforms. Security is everything. This single point of convergence is a
guarantee for failure
Secondly, nations protect their masterplans, especially technology
plans and yet government officials of Nigeria received $500m of “aid”
from a foreign power for something as sensitive as this? With all the IT
skills domiciled with Nigerians, was it not possible for these
officials to call a series of conferences for these skilled Nigerians
and build a team to work with????? Again security is everything.
Thirdly, whatever the justification, it is manifestly inappropriate
to register a private company to run eGovernance Services. It is the
culmination of the commercialisation of Govt services which all have
budgetary appropriation from the commonwealth of Nigerians. Why make us
pay for it again? and then still involve a commercially registered
company. When did government need commercially registered firms to
render service, regulate the nation, form policy or even collect money
for its services? And worse still, one commercial entity to represent
ALL Government MDAs under NIPOST platform???
Fourthly, why NIPOST platform? A NIPOST under Bisi Adegbuyi that
has not achieved any Transformation of NIPOST? We are now to entrust
such with the responsibility of hosting the eGov service of the entire
nation? Who is Bisi Adegbuyi? he was once an Ogun State delegate for
Jonathan in PDP and now turned out to be an appointee of APC from Oyo
State. Despite all entreaties can not make headway for or account in
respect of all the stamp duties running into Trillions which NIPOST
along with other agencies is accountable for. Attempted to collect 1,000
naira every year from Nigerians for a digital addressing framework that
is free globally. Violated Executive Order Number 5 of President
Muhammadu Buhari. Misled the National Assembly, Presidency and Ministry
that NIPOST had signed a contract with a Foreign Company for digital
addressing when no such thing had been done because in reality, it was
his friends private company mData Technologies that had actually signed
the contract for the whole of Nigeria instead of NIPOST. Now this same
person has things to do with national eGov and suddenly a private
company has been registered to handle the eGovernance through NiPOST
platform? Once again, the word scam is beginning to ring bells around
this eGovernance program. If it walks, clucks and looks like a chicken,
it usually turns out to be a chicken. The eGov project will be a
disaster on a massive scale if steps are not taken to reorient its
course.
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