I am not an IT person, but the past couple months has exposed me to the underground runnings in the IT world. Occurrences that I normally would have been oblivious of or just willfully ignored. The impact of digitization on our world has gone beyond owning and handling smart appliances. Artificial intelligences are the way now – shop-assistant robots, self-driving cars, dentist robots, surgery robots…things are happening people. We only get to hear of them it in the news when they are either monumental successes or abysmal failures. Still, all that hasn’t put cogs in the wheel of progress. It has in fact, made me realize how very under-represented Nigeria is in the world of IT. It is a continuous source of worry that we will never amount to anything more than end users of whatever technology or innovation is released into the market.
Watching Mrs Remi Willoughby today on a breakfast television show, preach the gospel of robotics gave me hope for our future. Remi who is a director with STEM, was part of a team who organized Nigerian teenagers to attend the First Global Robots Challenge in America last year. She was canvassing support for the 2018 edition to be held in Mexico and raising awareness for the try-outs to be held in Ikoyi tomorrow.
I know certainly, that she has her work cut out for her, given the celebration of mediocrity (I still cannot get over a Minister proudly telling Nigerians we will soon start to make PENCILS in Nigeria), the terrible state of our science and technology institutions and never-ending incidences of favoritism that would not let real talents be discovered. Still, having all those youngsters attend would broaden their horizons and give us hope of a technology creating future.

Please @Mynd44 @Mkmyers45 @UjSizzle can you have this on front page? Some teenager could benefit immensely