INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY AS A TOOL FOR CREATING JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a major tool for gaining competitive advantage in the corporate world and as such has been integrated into the operations of most high performing organizations in every economy. A recent policy note released by the World Bank says that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are transforming the world of work, creating new job opportunities and making labour markets more innovative, inclusive, and global. ICTs are influencing employment both as an industry that creates jobs and as a tool that empowers workers to access new forms of work, in new and more flexible ways (Samuelson, 2008). The emerging ICT-enabled employment opportunities matter because countries around the world are looking to create more good jobs, which have positive economic and social implications for workers and for society. ICT is critical to Nigeria’s quest to becoming one of the leading economies in the next five years, as spelt out in the Vision 20:2020 agenda. The world is increasingly becoming technology-driven, and ICTs remain a key driver of any economy, as it has the potential to address the rising unemployment trend in the country.
In a recent report published by the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, it revealed that the ICT sector had boosted the Federal Government’s job creation efforts by creating over 12 million jobs in the past two years. It described this current contribution as an improvement on the job opportunities created by the sector between 2002 and 2012. The ICT sector in Nigeria is currently boosting the federal government’s effort in job creation with the creation on an average of about 12 million jobs from 2012 to date, that is, a significant improvement on the 2.5 million jobs the sector created between 2002 and 2012. This is in addition to contributing about nine percent to the growth of Nigeria’s GDP.
The Ministry of Labour and Productivity in Nigeria says the Federal Government is set to declare total war on unemployment and joblessness in the country with the use of ICT systems and operations which is aimed at training unemployed Nigerians. Fakiyesi (2010), opine that despite the exploitation of negative aspect of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by a few Nigerian youths, ICT has raised the economy of the nation, especially the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 1.62 per cent (Oluleye, 2006).
Although he lamented that apart from the improvement on the economy, ICT has also enhanced falsehood, dissemination of harmful information as well as fraudulent activities in the transaction of businesses.
