In the month of October 2022, the ICDL Foundation CEO, ICDL Africa General Manager and Regional Manager visited the Nigerian Market for market overview and strategic meetings with stakeholders towards the promotion of ICDL in Nigeria. Prior to their arrival, the Nigerian team had earmarked major stakeholders for them to meet with.
The Nigerian team, led by A.U. Mustapha (SAN) successfully engaged the team in ten (10) critical stakeholder meetings. These included The Registrar General of the Corporate Affairs Commission, Alhaji Garba Abubakar who was unavoidably absent but was ably represented by the Head of the IT department at the Commission. Overall, they expressed their willingness to partner with ICDL and were excited about the opportunity to become an ATC.
Furthermore, ICDL team met with The Chief Judge of the Federal Capital Territory High Court wherein six other Judges of the Court were present. Their response to ICDL was a resounding yes as the Judges noted that the visit could not have come at a better time. The Court has a fundamental need to go digital to improve the efficiency in their delivery of justice and is willing to partner with ICDL in that regard.
The team later met with Council Secretary of National Judicial institute and the Administrator of the National Judicial Institute who were represented by their Head of I.T and Legal Department. These institutions are responsible for the training and funding of the Courts in Nigeria and are instrumental to the inculcation of ICDL as the digital skills standard for the Nigerian Courts. During the meeting, they talked of the systems that they have in place and wanted to know how ICDL certification would complement what they already have. Damien, the ICDL Foundation CEO, took them through what ICDL is and the focus on people and not facility. They agreed that while they may have these systems, the people that will operate them need to be trained and that is where ICDL comes in. They were highly receptive to the proposal of accrediting them as an ATC and expressed their willingness to introduce ICDL into their training for the judges and their staff.
Additionally, the ICDL team had a very fruitful meeting with the Inspector General of the Nigeria Police and seven of his Deputy Inspector Generals. The meeting was highly televised across national broadcasting agencies in Nigeria and the IGP committed to train 10,000 police trainees with ICDL and later to look into including the ICDL certification as a digital skills course for all the police force with a workforce of over 350,000 personnel. The team also had a meeting with the Executive Secretary of TET Fund during which, he confirmed that phase II of the project will commence soon. This is a project the team in Nigeria is following closely to make sure the second phase will be a great success as was witnessed in phase one of the project.
Other stakeholders met by the team included the Director General of National Youth Service Corps which train all university graduates in Nigeria, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of interior, the CEO of Digital Bridge Institute and the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Overall, the meetings were a resounding success as these institutions are all ready to work with ICDL and have it as their digital skills standard. The ICDL Africa Team in Nigeria is to follow up with all the stakeholders and support them towards realizing the dream of equipping their workforce with the requisite digital skills.
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