Pantami’s presentation at the convocation lecture which held at the University’s main campus on Friday was titled: “Datafication of Society: Economic and Security Issues in Producing and Using Public and Private Data in Nigeria.”
The Minister affirmed that a digital economy has been widely accepted as the single most important driver of innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. This explained why, the new mandate of the Ministry is the development of the economy, leveraging technology, in line with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of the Federal Government.
“So, the NDEPS has a very strong data theme and datafication is an important aspect of the implementation across all the eight pillars. Data is critical to the success of the digital economy and scholars now refer to data as the new oil as data drives the digital economy and the digital economy drives the growth of the traditional economy,” the Minister said.
He said that digital society and emerging technologies support development of high-level skills that will enhance the aptitude of Nigerians to use public data and anonymized private data for social good, towards creating wealth from data.