The federal government has launched the FinTrak Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Product for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), aimed at digitizing services in the public sector by the year 2030.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, who launched the product on behalf of the federal government stated that digital services are currently the most consumed products in the country.
“To achieve self-sufficiency, Nigerians need to start producing what they consume and vice versa. We all know that only a few numbers of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) today. So, this is a welcome development because it does not only cover the Federal Government Agencies, it also targeting the Public Sector which means taking Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solution to a non-consumer sector,” said Pantami, who was represented by Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa.
He commended the FinTrak Software team on the innovative solution and informed the audience that plans are underway to train about 1 million developers within 18 months and urged the software developers to key into the initiative.
“Research has shown that no nation can attain a sustainable development without self-sufficiency; to achieve that self-sustainability, we need to start developing ourselves”, the Minister stressed.
He added that about 70-80% of technology Nigeria consumes today is software based and the country has a more competitive advantage to grow in the software sector than in the hardware, given the massive talents that abound in the country, hence, nothing should stop us from achieving self-sufficiency in software development”.
The GMD of FinTrak Software, Bimbo Abioye while making a presentation of the product informed attendees that the company has the potential to engage over 5000 youth if they are very well patronized by Government in its digitization efforts.
He noted that another critical reason for local content in software is the security of the Nation’s data and critical information currently resident in foreign applications.
“FinTrak today is a company with a workforce of over 150. Training 40 young Nigerians at FinTrak Academy. These people are paid and trained for 6 months. In readiness to join our workforce. That brings our total workforce to 190. And those 190 people have possibly 10 dependents. So the company is helping to provide a livelihood for 1900 Nigerians and we can do much more,” Abioye said.