Digitize Nigeria like Bawumia is doing in Ghana – Nigerians beg Buhari

Nigerians appear to be envious of Ghana’s quest to achieve digitization and are wondering why their president Muhammadu Buhari is not emulating this drive being championed by Ghana’s Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

The head of Ghana’s Economic Management Team has been at the forefront of fighting to ensure that the country is digitized with the introduction of a paperless system in all sectors, the digital property addressing system which ensures that all locations in the country are addressed among others.

An article sighted by MyNewsGh.com on punchng.com a Nigerian online portal observes that despite the background of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as an economist he is a top notch guru in ICT.

Oye Arikanki who wrote the article said “Bawumia is doing a yeoman’s job in carrying out a comprehensive implementation of digitalisation in all government’s ministries and departments which has increased government revenue and facilitates ease of doing business. Bawumia’s theory of using digitisation to drive government systems has reduced wastages and driven revenue generation thus making government delivery of policies more efficient. What is more?

It has put the Ghanaian economy on the part of predictive and progressive growth. By 2020, all government payment in Ghana will go electronic. All over Ghana, you can see the effect of digitisation in harbor, judicial services, land registry, passport applications, health records, etc. In Ghana, soon, no one will carry files from hospital to hospital as everything has gone digital.

Few days ago, President Buhari inaugurated his new ministers and made some new appointments. Curiously, there was no appointment of a new economic adviser who is supposed to be a prominent member of the new cabinet. As a matter of fact, as far as the nation’s finance ministry is concerned, it is old wine in new bottle. The former minister is retained as the substantive minister of finance with additional portfolio of budget and planning.

Honestly, Nigeria needs a prominent economic adviser like the late Prof. Sam Aluko who will write a thesis and develop a theory and recommendations to be used in running the economy like digitalisation of all government departments and the economy as Bawumia is doing in Ghana. All the mixed-up, fire brigade or what I call Bolekaja economic theory that is being used in Nigeria currently will not work and not enough to run an economy of about 200 million population.