The Managing Director, SystemSpecs, Mr. John Obaro, has said Nigeria is making significant progress in software development, despite challenges posed by the economy and government regulation.
Obaro, who made the assertion shortly after he received the award of ‘Indigenous Software of the Decade’ on behalf of SystemSpecs at the BoICT Awards, which held in Lagos recently, cited an example with Remita, a product and software payment solution that was locally developed in Nigeria and been adopted by the federal government to drive the country’s Treasury Single Account (TSA). According to him, Remita has been able to address the challenges of financial leakages in government circles and has helped the federal government to harmonise the hitherto scattered government accounts into a single account, with the opportunity to have a good idea of government funds at a single glance.
“Remita has been on for 14 years but we were operating at the corporate level in a quiet manner until TSA brought us to limelight few years ago. “The federal government showed interest in Remita and took it up from there and since then, a number is states have shown interest in Remita, which is a payment solution software, designed to address issues of financial leakages.
“So we need more of such software technology to drive businesses in Nigeria.” Obaro said.
He explained that there were lots of locally developed software solutions like Remita in Nigeria that have not been discovered, adding that in spite of the many challenges facing the software industry, Nigerians are tech savvy and innovative especially in software development, but lack government support and patronage.
“Software quality in Nigeria has improved significantly, especially in the last three years, with a good number of Nigerians trained abroad on software development.
“Although there are still challenges, but we are gradually overcoming them,” Obaro said.
Speaking on the award, Obaro said the BoICT Award, had in the past ten years, established itself as a significant industry award player, and people appreciate the depth of research work that goes into the award. We have been recognised as the Indigenous Software of the Decade and we are privileged to be honoured with such an award.
“With this award, customers’ expectations about our service delivery will no doubt double, but we are equal to the task because we are in an industry that supports continuous race in competition and it has helped us to always compete against our latest achievements, in order to improve on our existing standards.
“So the award for me serves as an encouragement to do more and as a challenge to upcoming people who want to do things in the right way,” Obaro said.
