Firms to raise 1million naira with technology tool box

Volunteer Nigeria Project, which is scheduled for launch on 1st January, 2014, has concluded plans to utilise technology in raising up to  1 million volunteers across Nigeria and link them up to ongoing voluntary opportunities. The purpose, according to the company is to enable them contribute to national development particularly in areas of education, healthcare, environment, infrastructure development and renewable energy amongst others.

Speaking in Calabar recently, Executive Director, Lead, Inspire, Transform (LIT),  Iso Bassey, organiser of Volunteer Nigeria Project, said: “What we seek to do through the Volunteer Nigeria Project is to create a platform that encourages and rewards volunteers, development organisations and corporate Nigeria for contributing to our national development.”

Bassey added: “The Volunteer Nigeria framework can help our country in its efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”.

According to him, the core strategy for the project is the development of a website and cross-platform mobile application that would link volunteers, None Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and donors together and provide a mechanism for incentivising all parties to develop and sustain a volunteering culture.

"The Volunteer Nigeria Project aims to create a platform for ongoing interaction between volunteers, NGOs and donors in a bid to enhance the contributions of all three to national development," Bassey said.

The Project is an expansion of LIT’s existing framework that has seen the organisation raise hundreds of volunteers to take part in school paintings, tree plantings, landscaping and youth development projects.

Lead. Inspire. Transform/Volunteer Nigeria is an initiative of LIT, a non-governmental nation-building organisation with a mission to raise and inspire leaders to influence and build better societies.

Information technology will drive national educational policy by zinox boss

Chairman of Zinox, Leo Stan-Ekeh, has insisted that Information Technology (IT) tools would drive the nation's National Education Policy to a level that would make it competitive with developed countries of the world.

He therefore called on 21st Century technology experts to take a critical look at the country's National Policy on education, and see Information Technology as the tool that will drive the sector.

Stan-Ekeh spoke when the new Executive of the Nigeria Computer Society  (NCS), led by Prof. David Adewunmi, visited his Lagos office.

Stan-Ekeh argued that Nigeria’s education must be restructured with modern technology tool, in order to achieve more competitive outcomes.

According to him, Nigeria is running on a digital age and it is time to make critical decisions that would bring about a break from the analogue past.

He said: "Nigeria today finds herself in times that are as difficult as 1969, the peak of the civil war, when nationalists and stakeholders in education came together in a bid to salvage the ship of state from the vicious grip of ethnicity, religious bigotry and corruption. The situation has been compounded by kidnapping, terrorism, our inability to fund education, and the inability of Nigerian graduates to fit into existing vacancies in the industry.”

The Zinox Chief urged the NCS to direct its gaze at the need to restructure education in Nigeria with IT as the main tool, and explained that with technology, the objectives of teaching and learning could be achieved at a lower cost with more competitive outcomes.

He further noted that electronic content would cost less while solving the problem of overcrowded classes that have perplexed educational administrators for decades.

Adewunmi who is the newly elected President of NCS, expressed appreciation for the role that the Zinox Group has been successfully playing in the IT sector. He said the successful delivery of sensitive and large scale projects by Zinox at the national level, has proved to the world that the Nigerian IT practitioner is a world-class professional with the capacity to match the best in the world.

The Zinox management and the NCS leadership agreed to work together in upholding international standards, enforcing the local content policy, capacity building and serving the unreached. Both organisations expressed their readiness to cooperate on all issues relating to the robust deployment of IT at all levels of education in Nigeria.