Technology innovation represents a way for developing nations to foster economic development, improve levels of education, training and way of life.
These and more were the points made by Chairman, Zinox Group, Leo Stan Ekeh, as he prepared the minds of Nigerians on how technology would disrupt several spheres of the Nigerian economy by 2029.
Speaking at the 2019 Annual Lecture Series of foremost advisory and corporate commercial entity, Alliance Law Firm, the Techpreneur said that no one has the capacity to stop the coming wave of positive technological disruption.
He tasked Nigerians, especially the youths to take advantage of the positive digital disruption and add impetus to the brand Nigeria on the global map.
The Zinox boss, who was the Lead speaker at the event, said, “It is now between our competence, our commitment and God to lead other nations of the world. This is a century of quality wealth driven with knowledge and conscience and powered by technology. We have no reason not to scale with over 200million ambitious people from birth.”
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Meanwhile, the event was attended by the Chairman, MTN Nigeria, Ernest Ndukwe, who chaired the occasion; Media entrepreneur, Linda Ikeji; Managing Director, Ecobank Nigeria, Patrick Akinwutan, and former Director, NOTAP, Umar Bindir.
Others are Group Managing Director, Mojec International Holdings, Chantelle Abdul; and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Payment Tokens, Interswitch, Mike Ogbalu, among others.
Ekeh described the event as one of the best ever organised in Nigeria in recent times because of the quality and content of the event.
According to him, every sector of the Nigerian economy is experiencing the impact of technology, be it the electoral system, health care delivery, agriculture, banking, transport, education, hospitality, governance, entertainment, housing and including the way businesses are run in Nigeria.
“Today, Nigeria is moving closer to e-voting. Also, you will observe that post-election litigations have dropped considerably. In fact, we are down by about 41% today.
“Once we migrate to e-voting fully, anyone who loses an election will have no need to go and contest it in court. This is the power of technology. Technology does not lie. This is why I chose to go into it as a profession,” he added.
He urged the Federal and State Governments to take that decision now to invest about $10 billion to provide quality digital infrastructure in Nigerian schools at all levels and finance school fees for indigent students nationwide.
“When I returned to this country over 30 years ago, I was worth less than $10,000. Within three months of returning to Nigeria, I was privileged to have met people like General Theophilus Danjuma, the Awolowo family and others who patronised me and in the first six months, I hit over $4.5m balance sheet size.
“I wouldn’t have achieved this if I had decided to remain in the UK, as I was being advised then by those who saw no future for Nigeria in technology. It is important to note that though my customers did not really understand what they were buying, I did not betray them. This century is a century of trust and those that can not be trusted have no financial capacity to scale.
“A very good example of this is Konga which is run by my son and his colleagues. A few months after we acquired Konga, Naspers – the previous owners – which invested $32m in TenCent sold off two per cent of its stake for $9.8bn. Today, Naspers’ remaining 28 per cent stake in TenCent is worth $133bn. If the whizkids at Konga choose to put Konga up for sale today, we have an idea how much it will attract. Nigeria with our growing quality population is headed for greatness,” Ekeh added.
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The event also witnessed the launch of the Doing Business in Nigeria manual. Chief Host of the event and Managing Partner, Alliance Law Firm, Uche Val Obi (SAN) affirmed that the publication drew on the firm’s vast advisory experience and their status as notable contributors in the IMF/World Bank Doing Business publications.