‘ICT, not agriculture, will fast-track Nigeria’s growth and development’
Tope Aladenusi is the president of ISACA Lagos and also the chief strategy officer at Deloitte, West Africa. In this interview with Arinze Okamelu, he reveals amongst other things how ICT can fast-track Nigeria’s growth and development. Excerpts:
What is ISACA and its core objectives?
Initially, it was known as Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). ISACA is a non-profit global association. We engage in development, adoption and the use of globally accepted industry leading knowledge and practices in information systems. Right now, a lot of organisations depend on information system to do business. So what ISACA does is to ensure we are able to trust the systems, and derive values from the systems, and we do that by providing some leading practices to assist towards that. ISACA has over 140,000 professionals in over 180 countries. Like I said, initially, it was known as Information Systems Audit and Control Association. But now, we have dropped that full name, and now use ISACA just the same way International Business Machine now uses IBM as their brand name. We are now using ISACA because over time, the scope of ISACA’s operation has moved beyond Audit and Control to IT Governance, Cyber Security and a number of things that affect information systems.
How did you come in contact with ISACA?
I came in contact with ISACA when I joined Deloitte; you know in Deloitte we have a very large IT audit practice; so we support our clients- as part of financial statement audit, we also do IT audit. These days we realise that many companies depend on information systems to produce their financial statement. So you go to any organisation today, a particular application is used to produce their financial statement. For you to rely on that financial statement you need to look at the process by which that financial statement was prepared and that process has to do a lot with the information systems, because the systems do a lot of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and takes data from all the various modules of the application. Now as a financial auditor, for you to rely on that financial statement, you need to go check the system to ensure that the system is processing the information very well. So because I needed to work on IT Audit, I needed to be a seasoned professional in IT audit, and of course, ISACA is the organisation that trains/certifies you to do that, that was how I got involved with ISACA years ago.
What is the impact of your trainings and seminars on members?
The major impact I would say is giving our members cutting edge knowledge and information in their practices. Things are changing, and are changing very fast. The way we used to do business five, ten years ago is different from what we are doing now. So as technologies change, the way we do business change and risks that we face also change. For instance, there was a time the banking sector was handling cash, but now they said let’s go cashless, and let’s use electronics channels. So what happens is that the risk has been transferred from the “cash society”, to the “cashless society”. So if in the past, armed robbers were coming with their guns to attack the bullion vans, or bank premises, now we have hackers who are online, who can (at the click of a button) steal other people’s money. So as we keep on adopting new information systems like cloud computing, blockchain, mobile money, and other new technologies, they come with their associated risks. What we do is to equip our members with the necessary knowledge and information to enable them safe guard their organizations as they embrace these new channels of business, that’s number one. Also, the seminars are good networking opportunities for people to meet each other and finally, it is also a platform for intelligence sharing. Right now in Nigeria, we don’t yet have a platform for organizations to share intelligence especially as it relates to cyberattacks. What a company suffers today, another company suffers tomorrow. “Hacker A” goes to “Company B” and scams them with a “trick C”, and that same hacker goes to another company and does the same scam and succeed. Whereas if they shared intelligence, “Company B” would have told other companies A-Z that this is happening to me, you too should watch out. ISACA provides such platform where we share intelligence as a body of professionals to stay ahead of the malicious people.
What has been the response of the public to ISACA and your activities?
The response has been fantastic. A lot of people are interested in what we are doing, and want to be part of it. As a matter of fact, the government is collaborating with us. The Minister of Communication is aware of what we are doing and NITDA (National Information Technology Development Agency) has adopted our COBIT5 framework for MDAs and government parastatals across the nation. The COBIT5 framework covers the governance and management of IT. The communication for the adoption of the COBIT 5 framework was done 3 months ago, and we expect NITDA to drive implementation and adherence. This took a long while to accomplish, like some two years of engaging them to see the importance and value of COBIT5, it is worth it but we are very happy that it finally came through.
So what is COBIT5?
Basically, COBIT 5 is a framework for the governance and management of information technology. And what COBIT5 is centred around is for us to transform IT from being a “cost centre” to “value centre”. The whole idea is to help us to have a proper management of IT so that organisations that invest in IT will begin to derive maximum value from that.
What’s your take on Nigeria’s ICT space?
I think Nigeria’s ICT space is picking up very well, but we still have a long way to go. I think the government needs to adjust some of its mindset so that we can harness the potentials of ICT space. I think the government is still living in the past each time they say for the country to start earning more foreign exchange that we should focus on agriculture and oil. If you look at ten years ago in the United States, the top 5 companies based on market capitalization were more of oil companies and maybe, just Microsoft, that was an ICT company. Now as at August 2016, the top 5 companies based on market capitalisation in the US stock market are Apple, Alphabets, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. All these are ICT companies. You may say that is the US but whether we like it or not, they set the trend for the world many times. And what is Nigeria doing? You can’t even see ICT companies in any strong zone in the Nigeria Stock Exchange and it is because of our mindset. I think if the government is conversant with modern day realities, some of the efforts they are directing to agriculture should be directed to ICT. Whether we like it or not, these young guys out there don’t want to do farming. They want to do some magic work with the computers.While I believe agriculture is good and very important, I think it is overhyped in Nigeria and it does not have all it takes to take us to the promise land; but ICT will take us there.
But one would have eaten before looking at ICT, because these companies you mentioned are in countries where agriculture has been developed?
That is a fair point, but to even develop agriculture you need ICT. You need science and technology to get your agriculture to the optimum level where you are producing for exports. The reason why we are still very low in agriculture is because we are still using substandard and manual systems. Now we should be talking of biotechnology, Agric-robotics, e-agriculture etc, and be remodeling the way we practice agriculture with ICT. In fact for almost every sector of the economy to thrive, you need ICT. The way we are going about our work here, we may be 100 years behind the developed nations because we are still trying to do things the old ways. You may not know the reason why the CEO of FACEBOOK came here; you think he came to look at our lagoons? No. He has seen the potentials of our country and came to have a “first -hand” experience. I am not saying we should neglect agriculture, I am saying we should deplore ICT to it.
As an IT professional, what practical ways would you say we can start to deploy ICT to fast track the growth and development of our country?
This is something that may take a lot of debate and discourse, so I may not be able to exhaust it here. But on a very high level, there must be that mindset shift from the government. The government must realise that ICT powers every other sector. That ICT can become our biggest foreign exchange earner just like our telecoms are giving us substantial part of our GDP as opposed to what it was before ten years ago. Once there is that shift in mindset, then there will be a well-developed roadmap to achieve that and that roadmap must be implemented. One other thing is to improve on our infrastructure; in terms of giving people power, free internet, etc. These key infrastructures will be able to stimulate people’s creativity. Then the final thing is investment in ICT. Most times you hear of intervention funds for agriculture by the Central Bank or Bank of Industry; why can’t they have such large intervention funds for ICT? If they invest in ICT, in no time we will be net exporters of ICT products all over the world among other benefits.