Experts Urge FG to Leverage Technology to Tackle Nigeria’s Challenges

A real estate expert, Mr. Femi Akintunde, has called on the federal government to take advantage of the technology offered by the fourth industrial revolution, to tackle the multifaceted challenges facing the country.

Akintunde, the Group Managing Director, Alpha Mead, a real estate solution company, said this at the 2024 roundtable with the theme, ‘4th Industrial Revolution and the Nigerian Built Environment’, organided by the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Lagos, recently.

Akintunde, the keynote speaker, said the general perception in the country is that of serious economic challenges, which has in turn inflicted hardship on the citizens.

He said the situation in the country is easily surmountable, if only government is able to connect with industrialisation.

“There is nothing here that says we cannot turnaround the fortunes of our country’s economy and catch up with the rest of the world. It is all about our readiness, willingness and commitment.

“The only problem with Nigeria is that it has not been able to connect with industrialisation. This focus should be on how industrial revolution can impact our lives.

“We must start to look at how to leverage technology to achieve all what we intend to achieve and be able to stand tall among nations and compete favourably with them.

“The fourth industrial revolution is all about the convergence and complementarity of emerging technology domains, including nanotechnology, biotechnology, new materials and advanced digital production technology,” Akintunde stated.

He cited inadequate infrastructure, increase in unemployment, among others, as some of the factors limiting the realisation of the fourth industrial transition in the country, adding that the fourth industrial revolution marked the era of automation robotics, while the fifth industrial revolution puts its focus on the people.

According to him, the fourth industrial revolution is the point where technology is leveraged and developed to the maximum level, that is, all forms of technology, ranging from Artificial Intelligence (AI) Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity, among others.

The keynote speaker stated that the fourth industrial revolution has put so much power in the hands of the world but how to ensure that such technology is deplored for the benefit of mankind is key.

“So, the conference is basically looking at the fourth industrial revolution with respect to where Nigeria is in the built environment industry and how the citizens could benefit.

“Therefore, what we are saying is that in Nigeria, we have not really been able to advance well enough technologically, to be able to enjoy the benefits, as a result of so many environmental constraints.

“Key on these constraints are that our infrastructure to leverage these technologies are not well developed. We do not have good information technology infrastructure.

“Example is that the bandwidth is so limited and our power system is not working properly.

“For us to be able to deploy any of these technologies, there must be uninterrupted power supply, which is not currently available.

“We still have a lot of things being done manually, high level of mobility constraints and many other things that are not enabling the academics that can research and develop findings that will proffer solutions to challenges facing every sector of the country’s economy,” he stated.

He noted that government must intensify efforts to connect with advancement in technology, if it intends to achieve its much desired national transformation and development.

According to him, the first step to this is to begin to take advantage of the technology that the fourth industrial revolution offers, by paying attention to infrastructure and developing human capital.

The keynote speaker added that government must also ensure that its activities are in line with the current global trend, and to ensure effective communication, as well as to link the power of technology to how it connected with humans.

He also appealed to government to invest hugely in the academic sector, especially the university system, in a bid to support research that would assist the citizens to understand current global trends, especially in the technology space.

“They will be able to bring down to Nigeria what is happening on the outside world and adopt our own local resources to achieve the same objectives that they achieved there,” he stated.

The Dean, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Prof. Modupe Omirin, said the essence of the roundtable was to know the extent of awareness of professionals in the built industry in the country.

Omirin, who is from the Department of Estate Management, stated that the discourse was also to know if the professionals were aware of what the disruptive technology embodied in the fourth industrial revolution, such as big data, AI and augmented reality, among others.

“We want to know how aware they are and to what extent they are deploying these technologies in achieving efficiency in the world of works.

“This is because we know from the academic perspective, that we seem to be behind the rest of the world in the space of technological advancement.

“We want the people in the industry to talk to us, share with us what they are doing; we can identify what the gaps are and that will help us to teach the students, make them future ready and also help us a great deal to know where to direct research in the institution.

“So, our expectation is that at the end of this discourse, we will be able to distill key issues that we need to address from policy and research angles.

“We will also use it to identify areas in which we need to deploy efforts toward building awareness of practitioners in the field,” she said.

Panelists at the conference included Mr. Babajide Gbajumo, Managing Partner, Construworth Consult, and Mr. Joseph Aro, co-founder, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Observatory Earth Analytics Consult, British Columbia, Canada.