S/Korea commits N2.5bn to Nigeria’s e-governance

Minister of Communications, Barr. Adebayo Shittu

 

The minister of communications, Adebayo Shittu, has said the Korean government, through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), would spend N2.5bn ($8.56 million) on the training of civil servants for  e-governance in the country.
The minister said 22,625 public servants would benefit from the continuous capacity training administered by selected professors from South Korea on areas of institutional training programmes, advanced group training programmes, curriculum development for Nigeria-initiated courses, and scholarship for Nigerian instructors.

Shittu, who spoke at  KOICA’s second in-country training project in Abuja, said “more than any other country, the Korean government has supported Nigeria’s drive for digitisation.”
The ministry, he said, “sees the overall purpose and rationale of the Nigeria e-governance project as the imperative to strengthen transparency and accountability in government and, therewith, upscale efficiency and excellence in public service and public service administration.”
He told the participants that since the establishment of the communication ministry in 2012, an expert platform was created for a holistic approach to e-government from the infrastructure, skills, standards and patriotic duty viewpoints.
The Republic of Korea ambassador to Nigeria, Noh Kyu-duk, said the e-governance training undertaken by KOICA aimed to improve the efficiency and transparency of the public administration services in Nigeria’s Vision 20: 2020.
He said a master plan for Nigeria’s attainment of e-governance was handed over to the ministry, with the hope that it “will open a new chapter in Nigeria’s e-government journey, resulting to clear, transparent and efficient government.”
KOICA country director, Jung Sang Hoon, said the agency had trained 105 public servants from 47 ministries, departments and agencies during the first in-country training in August, with seven civil servants currently undergoing masters’ degrees on e-governance in Korea’s Kookmin University.