Alas, we are not yet there!

I guess my first imperative should be to offer my kudos to you guys in charge of stuff on this site, for until quite recently, it wouldn't even have been possible for someone like me to have the opportunity of making this sort of statement through this sort of medium. So, yes, we've come a long way on the internet bushpath!

The problem is: there's so much more possibility! At the end of the path, we must find that crucial exit into the main road, then thereafter into the highway, and then... the superhighway! It is much more painful when considered against the reality that this country is awesomely blessed with human and material resources (kindly permit my reuse of that overused cliche!). But that's simply the ironical truth!

Powers-that-be, please do something! And I mean Powers-that-be at N.I.G.
as much as I mean Powers-that-be in Nigeria. We just have to do something, and then another, and then another... to improve internet penetration in our country. Obviously, to make any great impact, the problem of pervading poverty down to the grassroots has to be addressed, and then literacy, and then 'NEPA' (or whatever alias or 'baptismal name' it may choose to acquire tomorrow), and that links up altogether with the issues in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, to which our country affirms subscription. How I wish (and indeed have been praying) that the good Lord, one day, would bless this land with competent, honest, and passionate leaders! Someone should ask questions such as how did certain nations like India 'suddenly' shoot to the enviable positions they now occupy in terms of holistic IT muscle?

Yes, many Naija websites are now springing up by the day. But by the way, I perceive that most of us may fall for this smokescreen: that www.lagbaja.com (and pleeeaaase, I am NOT referring to the Masked One's homepage, to which, by the way, I was unable to log on several times this weekend, ?reason!) means that Messrs Lagbaja and Co are now properly represented online. Yet this is too often very far from, truth. Well, while I admit that the mere collection of web pages sharing a common url may suffice for the definition of a website, such a 'site' is certainly grossly insufficient for any corporate or quasi-corporate entity worth its mettle. Along this line, what really matters to you and me is that we can, while browsing the Lagbaja and Co site, identify areas where business-realated and other interactions can potentially take place, refine this information through search, filter and other functions, and then be able to carry out as much of the eventual actual transaction as much as possible, still within the convenience (if that's the case) of the internet medium. I guess this is the sort of website the pros actually refer to as a web application. It does not speak well that the Nigerian webspace is sparsely cluttered with too many dull, static and largely ineffective websites, often with out of date information and often in 'down time'. Super-companies and government departments are not even exempted! Are you expecting me to name names?

Anyhow, whatever the obstacles are (and they are enormous, I know), they must be dismantled deliberately and steadily. The stakeholders must redouble efforts at entrenching the internet culture (backed of course by appropriate and sustainable technology and infrastructure) in the system. Anyone who cannot see that tomorrow is going to run online, needs 'glasses', if not 'eye surgery'! If Nigerians and their leaders allow the country to be left behind, it won't be the first time we're getting the short end of the stick from those to whom we have 'entrusted' our leadership! And we'd probably keep turning the other cheek, wouldn't we?

Dr Ifedi Okonkwo

Excerpts from this article appears on the Forum pages of the Nigeria Internet Group. Click this link to visit the site: http://www.nig.org.ng/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=96&PN=1&TPN=1