The Federal Government announced on Monday, July 29, its ambitious plan to digitalize 80% of government activities by 2025, as part of President Bola Tinubu’s drive to modernize Nigeria’s public sector.
The digitalization program seeks to ”increase efficiency, decrease corruption, boost transparency, and align Nigeria’s public sector with global best practices in e-governance.
Senator Hassan Hadejia, speaking at the opening of a digitization training session for Vice-President’s Office staff, emphasized the critical need to modernize government operations using digital technologies.
“If you don’t go digital, you get to a point where you will even fail to integrate with the rest of the world,” Hadejia stated. “Everybody is moving ahead, and you have to get to that level where you can at least get that connectivity.”
He emphasized the importance of enforcing compliance across all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to ensure the success of the initiative. “Compliance has to be enforced because if you wait for everybody to be ready, you will not achieve the goal,” he said. “If you have a situation where you are forced to present your requests or responses in a digital format, everybody will be forced to comply.”
Drawing parallels with the judiciary’s successful adoption of digital processes, Hadejia noted, “Surprisingly, the judiciary is almost at the forefront of digitization now. It simply happened because several years ago the Supreme Court said it will not tolerate paper processes from lawyers anymore.”
The initiative marks a significant step towards modernizing Nigeria’s public sector, promising improved governance and greater integration with global digital standards.