Mr. Akin Adaramola, Ondo State Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning said the rate of unemployment in Nigeria would continue to rise if the government fails to provide infrastructure to encourage Information and Communication Technology development and Electricity generation.

This was stated at the opening of a 10-day training programme organised by the state government in partnership with the national Information Technology Development Agency for engineers and ICT graduates in the state civil service.

The commissioner explained that many advanced economies of the world, in the past, developed from an agricultural economy in which land was the key resource, then to an industrial economy in which natural resources was, and now, to a knowledge-based economy characterised by ICT in which knowledge is the key resource, asserting that ICT was pivotal to the development model.

The commissioner maintained that most advanced economies developed very rapidly because of their heavy investment in ICT, and insisted that any country or state that paid lip service to the critical sector would remain under-developed for life.

He said “Most of the world’s economies are underpinned by ICT even as it also takes the front row in the development agenda of emerging market economies. The developed countries built their economic development agenda around ICT.”

“It is worthy of note that Nigeria and India started development at about the same period. Today, India towers higher above Nigeria in the development index because it deploys ICT-based technologies to accelerate her development trajectories”, he added.

Adaramola commented with concern that Nigeria, with its current high computer-illiterate population, stands at the verge of losing its proper position among the comity of developed nations if necessary strategies were not employed by government on enlightenment campaign and capacity building.