Going forward Data is going to be the New Oil. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft among others, generate revenues through data and with the revenues they’ve become multinational companies.
Nigeria has so far been unable to build data structures that can help the country plan, experts have said.
They said the country had continued to dwell on oil when data is the key revenue source for the digital economy.
Yvonne Alozie, programme director for GITGIRL and Open Banking Nigeria, said data as basic as the number of people in the country is inaccurate.
“I feel the data we have in the country is not enough to give us relevant information on how to move the country forward, she stated.
“Government needs to update its data and review them. It’s been long since Census was conducted and we are still working with the data which is grossly inaccurate.” She observed that the Nigeria Identity Management Commission (NIMC), needs to improve the country’s identification system as well. Rajesh Jakhotia, the Founder of K2 Analytics Finishing School, argued that the country has to swing away from oil pretty soon, considering the giant growth of firms like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.
“There’s a huge opportunity lying untapped in data analytics," Jakhotia said.
“Going forward Data is going to be the New Oil. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft among others, generate revenues through data and with the revenues they’ve become multinational companies. These experts feel the government needs to get more serious with creating databases that can allow it accurately predict problems such as unemployment.
“We can do a lot better by creating an open data system to share structured data among agencies and government in other to develop the country. Having access to ID would help the government know the status of the citizens, if employed or not that way, improvement can be measured,” Alozie enthused.
Evans Otalor, a data scientist at Sterling bank, said it is high time the government set-up structures and processes to gather data and system of availability of the data to enable Private sectors to utilize their own processes. Certain officials in the Nigerian government, still hold the obsolete view that crude oil remains the source of funding to lift people out of poverty.
Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), told a delegation in September that fossil fuel demand would stay high beyond 2040, an opinion that differs from global predictions.