Mr Vincent Olatunji, the Acting Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) said at least 50 per cent of cities in the country would be e-Governance compliant by 2019.
Olatunji made this known on Thursday at an event titled: “Nigeria Smart City Initiative Partners Forum’’ organised by the agency in Abuja.
NITDA boss said that the agency was keen to promoting the development of smart city technology and projects as key national policy through its e-Government Unit.
He said that the e-Government Unit of the agency had put in place some key projects owned by states government from Feb. 3 till date to ensure that state were working toward compliant.
He said that the agency was working at an extremely conservative rate of one smart solution in each zone annually, exclusive of Abuja and Lagos, which had special status in the programme.
“With this, we are confident of going ‘smart’ in over 50 per cent of our cities by 2019,” he said.
“The projects include traffic flow management, smart flood management, secondary school learning hubs, smart solutions for managing Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), smart Internally Generated Revenue Systems and Integrated Public Transportation Systems.
“The pressures on urban infrastructure and the environment certainly call for new actions and solutions to fix the increasingly complex challenges.
“We are demonstrating a new service delivery paradigm based on multi-stakeholder engagement to develop, deploy and manage smart solutions for the benefit of the average Nigerian citizen.
“With an annual urban migration rate of 3. 7 per cent of national population, the pressures on infrastructure and the environment call for new actions and solutions to fix challenges of pollution, traffic congestion, electricity, water, affordable housing, health and education.
“We set to promote Internet of Things (IoTs) and e-governance standard platforms and tools in which disparate systems owned by different federal and state service entities communicate and share information.
“The Nigeria smart city development approach must also key into other existing policy provisions such as those of cyber-security, broadband, software and e-government development,” he said.
On development of smart city projects in the country, representatives of some state governments made their presentations on how the initiative could solve peculiar problems in their states.
Mr Tukur Abdullahi, the Personal Assistant to Special Adviser on ICT to Kaduna State governor, made presentation on proposal for Integrated Learning System in Kaduna state.
He said: “with basic facilities in place, government can develop interactive modules for secondary school students across the state, using visual classroom on all subjects.
“This will help the students to even see some of the things they use to hear on their screen, which helps learning especially in the rural areas,” he said.
Mrs Florence Idigo, the Head, Department of Information and Communication (ICT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Anambra State was optimistic on the state’s proposal.
“The proposed Foolproof Receipt for collection of government Internally Generated Revenue(IGR), in the state would create employment and block loss of revenue to touts,” she said.
