The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has called for partnership with the National Universities Commission (NUC) to design ICT curriculum for Nigerian universities.
The South-West Zonal Director of the agency, Mr Yinka Adejube, made the call in an interview in Lagos on Thursday. Adejube said that the curriculum of universities ought to have been reviewed to allow institutions of higher learning to produce employable graduates.
He said that producing employable graduates, especially in ICT would give necessary impetus to nation’s economy.
“We are planning partnership with NUC to review curriculum of courses in the universities, especially in the area of ICT.
“We want our graduates to be employable and to have enough experience before they graduate through the Student
Industrial Work Experience Scheme and Industrial Attachment (IT).
“This is just one of the ways we can encourage IT in Nigeria given the importance of data centres.’’
The director said that such a development would encourage students to learn modern tools in ICT, instead of relying on Cobol, Fortra, Algol and other old method of teaching ICT.
Adejube said it was to the best interest of the country’s economy to produce employable graduates in IT.
He said that the reviewed curriculum would encourage and make graduates to become self-reliant.
The director said that the importance of software could not be over-emphasised as the agency was actually meant to exchange and bring documents on benchmark on software testing in Nigeria.
Adejube said further that the agency had since brought stakeholders together to have professionals, who were ISO-certified in software production development.
