How Silicon Valley will make Nigeria’s ICT artisans certified professionals, world class – Mama Diaspora

By Kemi Kasumu, General Editor

Nigeria is a very blessed country.  They had made money from the export of groundnuts, the groundnuts pyramid.  Nostalgia! They had made money from the export of Cocoa.  Nostalgia! They made money from palm kernel.  Nostalgia! They made money from rubber plantation; all of these agricultural export.  Now, destiny comes again and they are making money from oil and gas but nobody is talking about oil again; the new thing its DATA, Information Technology! 

Call her Mama Diapora, call her Mama D, whichever way you call, it is still about the President Emeritus, All Nigerian-American Congress (ANAC), United States of America, Chief Temitope Ajayi, who for two months now has been in Nigeria helping to bring home the opportunities that are abound in certification of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to the Nigeria’s 65 percent young adults, who though are proficient in the ICT workability but have been lagging behind in the ability to earn commiserate pay like their mates around the world.

These opportunities are courtesy Mama Diaspora with the backing, according to her, of the America’s economic giant Silicon Valley Organisation, whereby at home Nigeria, young Nigerians who have cut a niche for themselves in the Information and Communication Technology sector but are yet to make a breakthrough thereby still crying woe of unemployment and agitating for free lunch from the government.  By the programme that her Silicon Valley – Nigeria Economic Development Inc, situated in the Silicon Valley in the USA, the narratives are expected to change as, those that will participate in the training programme to be handled by five professors from American universities: Harvard University, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, New York State University and Morgan State University, will be permanently empowered and linked to global standard with Certification that will be handed to them at the end of the programme.

It is what former Director-General of PRODA, Engr. Edmund Kaine, called technology transfer when he granted a press interview at his home in Enugu in 2009.  Speaking to this reporter at that time, Kaine, who built the bombs that were used on the side of the Odumegwu Ojukwu-led defunct Republic of Biafra during the now history Nigerian Civil War, said technology is not acquired in the university but that it is acquired in the industry.  He then suggested to the then Nigeria’s Federal Government under President Umar Musa Yar’Adua (may Allah forgive and repose his gentle soul in Al-Jannah) how to borrow a leaf from the developmental process that catapulted China and India to technological and ICT nerve centres of the world with capacity in many years now to cater for the local technology and ICT needs in their respective countries and earn foreign exchange through exports of same.

Edmund Kaine simply said by insisting on Technology Transfer whereby makers of any equipment will no longer be allowed to be in charge of installation and maintenance of such product they supply but will be made to teach the people locally how to do it, China freed itself and it is technology giant unarguably emergent world’s biggest economy today.

Worried why her own country of origin, Nigeria, that is the most powerful and populous economy in Africa has not made it to one of 20 most industrialized countries in the world, Chief Temitope Ajayi, popularly called Mama Diaspora by her influence as President Emeritus of ANAC, has always looked for one day that she would be part of the process for effectively handling the Technology Transfer that would aid the process for Nigeria’s emergence into actualization of its Vision 20:2020 and that time is here with her importation of opportunity that will help lift those she described as 65 percent young adults of the Nigerian population, employed or unemployed, to the global standard through certification of their knowledge capacity in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

As Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Silicon Valley – Nigeria Economic Development Inc (SV-NED Inc), her company that is named after the wealth creation Silicon Valley Organisation in the United States of America, Chief Temitope Ajayi has been given a blank cheque by the Silicon Valley Organisation of five big cities in the USA to go out to Africa and particularly her country of origin, Nigeria, and carryout the kind of training which will not only make experts the 65 percent young adults part of who are said to be generating N1.5 billion through the ICT from the Computer Village of Lagos but will also, more authentically, hand them the certification that will make them compete well with other ICT experts in the world.  If these 65 percent young adult Nigerians therefore are catapulted into such professional high heaven and they work for Silicon Valley from even their bedroom anywhere in Nigeria, the situation of unemployment and youth restiveness that has turned many youths to ICT miscreants involving in many cyber related crimes will vanish in no time.

Speaking in her Lekki, Lagos home on Sunday, Mama Diaspora gave the reason at her age of 62 she had to be home in Nigeria at this time working hard with stakeholders in the ICT sector to help uplift the information technology big brains that have only operated as artisans due to lack of qualification to the status of ICT experts with certification to be handed to them after thorough training, energizing and duly examined by those five professors of American universities to come.

She said, “I am on a mission coming back home and I will say it is divine mission.  To be honest with you, for a 62-year old woman that should be playing with and reading story books to her grand children to be here in Nigeria because of our other children is divine.  At my age, what am I still doing with Information Technology?  But then, it comes from the Silicon Valley where I am very proud to be a minority CEO, Chief Executive Officer, as a woman.  I don’t work there but I have my own company, Silicon Valley – Nigeria Economic Development Inc (SV-NED INC), there like any other big organisations and in Silicon Valley we have other big companies like Microsoft, the Intel, HP, and so on and then we have another ones; the Google, Facebook, which are more of social media.  I am just like them.

“But in America, we call something eco system.  If Nigeria can adapt to that eco system, we will talk less about politics, we will talk less about government, we will stay focused with the private sector and the private sector will invest in the intellectual properties of the young adults.

“In Silicon Valley we don’t talk Washington, we talk business.  In Nigeria it is government and all we talk about is free everything.  We have to differentiate between the two and let the private sector come out.  Let the private sector players come together and turn things around through intellectual property development and up we will see Nigeria in no time.  Fortunately I had a meeting with Mr. Olabintan that is Chairman of the Nigerian-American Chambers of Commerce and Industry, who is my mentor, and in my own little way I said, “Sir, you are very blessed to be where you are now.  Make history of that chair.”  Also I am blessed to have a meeting with the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the CEO of the Nigerian Economic Summit.  God bless all of them.  They are all trying not only for our own generation but for the 65 percent young adults in Nigeria, whether employed or unemployed.

“As a minority woman, I have an office inside the Silicon Valley and I have met with Mayor of San Jose, Silicon Valley California CA USA, who had even given me an award.  Much as the award is well appreciated, what I really want right now, I made up my mind, is that in my own little way as I am being called, Mama Diaspora, fame is not the main thing; the main thing is solution and the solution that I want is what I want to be remembered for,” she said.

She continued, “I am a Nigerian-American and when you talk to an American, you talk integrity.  The last meeting I had with the Silicon Valley executives they said, “We in Silicon Valley know that everybody calls you Mama Diaspora and we saw this sincerity in your passion that you really want the best for your country Nigeria and for your continent Africa.  We in Silicon Valley will be behind you like a shadow to make all your dreams a reality.”  If Silicon Valley can say that, I burst into tears that it is like they gave me a blank cheque and I said, “Come on! What am I still doing here for?”

“So when I now went back into the information technology, because it is calculus where you are required to use your brain, and knowing that Silicon Valley is serious business where you have to learn and realise that when you fall you knock it out and go again.  When you fall again, nobody is going to pick you up.  It is people that invest in you and so you have to impress them.  It is good to have a dream but this is business not non-profit.

“You fall down the first time, you knock it out and go again.  You fall the second time, nobody will pick you up.  You fall the third time and the fourth time you hit your billions! Oh! God bless America.  That is why if you read the background of Ali Baba, you will cry.  Is it Whatsapp, you will cry.  Is it Bill Gate?  Is it Mac Zucaberg?  I want Nigerian young adults to adapt to the Silicon Valley mentality.  Time of bickering, complaining and talking about free, free and all free things should be out of the system.  There is no free lunch in America.  They call it equity contribution and it will show us how serious you are.

“Nigeria is a very blessed country.  They had made money from the export of groundnuts, the groundnuts pyramid.  Nostalgia! They had made money from the export of Cocoa.  Nostalgia! They made money from palm kernel.  Nostalgia! They made money from rubber plantation; all of these agricultural export.  Now, destiny comes again and they are making money from oil and gas but nobody is talking about oil again; the new thing its DATA, Information Technology! Everybody is talking about data, AI, Artificial Intelligence, robotic, block chain, everybody uses social media now.  Somebody is cashing out on social media utilisation.  Even my President, Baba Buhari has a Facebook page, even the Vice President and all the governors.  I have been to Yaba Silicon Valley.  I have been to so many of these places they call hurbs including the Computer Village in Ikeja and Lagos where I was told by their executives that Computer Village make N1.5 billion daily.  But I notice it is just a space they renting to those people.  But I am yet to see one of those hurbs to be run like Silicon Valley in America where they sell a software for a million dollars.  That is the least.”