" ITREALMS: Mohammed applauds CommTech, Galaxy Backbone on defence sector forum

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Mohammed applauds CommTech, Galaxy Backbone on defence sector forum

L-r Ilukwe, Dr. Mohamme, Dr. Gwandu, Hon. Gusau, Maj-Gen Onwuamaegbu

The Minister of Defence, Dr. Bello Mohammed has applauded Ministry of Communications Technology and Galaxy Backbone on the hosting of the Defence Sector ICT Forum.

He gave this commendation in Abuja during his speech as the special of guest of honour at the event.

The Defence Sector ICT Forum is a Stakeholders Awareness Series (SAS) event hosted by Galaxy Backbone in collaboration with the Defence Headquarters to engender dialogue on how stakeholders in the Defence, Intelligence and Security community could leverage the benefits of Information and Communication Technologies to meet contemporary security challenges.

The latest forum has the theme, “Integrated ICT Framework for the Defence Sector: An Imperative for National Security.”

He said that the forum could not have come at a better time in the history of this country.  

“We are at a watershed in the history of our nation. When a nation is at a crossroads, it is time to break barriers and leap to higher grounds. The reason is because every nation is a bundle of talent, intellect and creativity. These inner resources are hardly exploited or harnessed to the full except there are challenges,” he said.

Mohammed described the current national challenges the country is facing in the area of security as a call for all stakeholders to task themselves to come up with novel solutions that bear testimony to their God-given capacity to meet the challenges of the time.

He expressed the confidence that one of the areas the country should be looking up to is Information and Communications Technologies, even as he said the modern society is a knowledge society driven by intelligence and information, therefore Nigeria’s defence and national security sector cannot be different.

Further, he said that at critical times in the history of nations, national security challenges had given the world some of the best known technologies in the history of mankind.

“Ours should not be an exception. It is time for us to begin to exploit new ways of tackling our security challenges” he said.

The Minister expressed the view that for Nigeria to overcome the present national security challenges all stakeholders must work together to evolve new ways of doing things and build capacity in modern information and communications technologies.

Dr. Mohammed said the forum was very important as it brought stakeholders in defence and information technology together, “so that we can talk to ourselves more closely and explore how we can work together to meet our challenges. The reason is that security, like knowledge, does not only have a military dimension but also a civil one.”

Nigeria, he said, needs to explore all the dimensions in a manner that assembles all the building blocks from all quarters at the least possible time and cost. Together, we need to examine current technologies that will help us tackle current challenges and institute the best ways not only of acquiring such technologies but also sharing them among the defence and security community.

He additionally pledged his ministry support for policy initiatives that could help the country benefit from a pool of ICT resources, information, knowledge, intelligence and technologies.

Remmy Nweke

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