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| Engineer Titi Omo-Ettu |
The $1
million fresh loan that the federal government got from China last week will do
more harm to the Information and Communication Technology industry than good, a
telecoms industry analyst has said.
The
government had announced last week that it took a loan of $1.1billion (about
N176billion) from China to implement some development projects in the Transport
and Communication Technology sectors.
Dr.
Okonjo-Iweala, the Finance Minister said the projects would boost the sophistication and
effectiveness of the government's efforts to tackle security challenges and
improve connectivity to modern technology, especially for Nigerian youths in
underserved rural areas.
The break
of the loan shows that $1billion will go to the Transport sector while $100m is
for Information and Communication Technology, ICT sector.
But writing
in his online ICT news portal Cyberschuulnews, Engineer
Titi Omo-Ettu said instead of
going cap in hand to finance ICT projects the federal government should have
done so to fund indigenous ICT private sector players, who should engage in
construction locally and create jobs.
Government
is pretending to be an 'Infrastructure Construction Agency' which it is not and
it should not be, he said. "Government must be forgetting its
responsibility for mobilizing cheap funds for indigenous private sector
players, who indeed should engage in construction and to whom the loans should
rightly be availed," he wrote.
THISDAY Nigeria