RAINA nation's greatness is determined by how it treats its weakest members, as Mahatma Gandhi observed. Today in Nigeria, our widows — among society's most vulnerable — face an arduous journey when claiming their rightful government-paid emoluments as next of kin. They must navigate a maze of documentation: death certificates, Certificates of Registration of Death, affidavits of next of kin, and newspaper publication notices. They approach employers or Pension Fund Administrators to open death-benefit accounts, only to meet bureaucratic hurdles and agonising delays during their most difficult moments.
As Taavi Rõivas, then Prime Minister of Estonia, said in 2016, the fundamental aim of twenty-first-century government must be to give citizens their most precious resource — time — to actually live their lives rather than spend it filling forms or waiting in queues. Estonia, without vast populations or unlimited resources, chose to be smart and innovative. We too must embrace technology — not as a luxury, but as a moral imperative — so that our widows and all vulnerable citizens receive the dignity, efficiency and compassion they deserve.
Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is my profound honour to address you on a subject that will determine the future trajectory of our great nation. I commend the organising committee for this theme at a time when we have an administration steering us towards sustainable, steady growth in which no one must be left behind.
Whose job is development?
Socio-economic development is the integrated process of improving a society's social and economic conditions: job creation, infrastructure — roads, power, water and digital — better education, improved healthcare, poverty reduction and gender equality, measured through indicators like GDP, life expectancy, literacy, employment and the Human Development Index.
It is a collective responsibility. The private sector drives jobs and innovation; civil society mobilises communities and demands accountability; development partners bring funding and global best practice. But the public sector coordinates and galvanises all of it — as policy maker, regulator, primary service deliverer and custodian of public resources. How can it coordinate effectively if it is not equipped with the tools of digitalisation? It cannot. Digital transformation is not optional; it is fundamental to effective governance.
Paper versus systems
Without digitalisation we have manual processes that take weeks, lost documents, data silos across agencies, human error, weak accountability and high running costs. With it, we have automated workflows that take minutes, secure storage, round-the-clock access, shared databases, accuracy, transparent audit trails and lower long-term costs.
Take birth registration. Today parents visit a registry, fill paper forms and wait weeks, with no link to health or education records. Digitally, the hospital reports the birth at delivery, parents receive an SMS reference, the certificate is generated within a day or two and linked to the national identity database, and the child's record follows them through health and education.
Take the harmonisation of records. Health holds births and deaths; the Population Commission holds demographics; Education holds enrolment; tax, immigration and the Electoral Commission each hold their own. Citizens give the same information again and again, data is inconsistent, and fraud thrives. An integrated national database — one digital identity per citizen, consent-based data sharing between authorised agencies — means registering once to access every service, and gives government accurate data for planning.
Take land. Multiple claims, disputed boundaries, lost documents and months of manual verification. Tamper-proof digital records, GPS-geotagged boundaries, instant verification and transparent transaction histories make property rights secure.
Why digital transformation is critical
It enables evidence-based decisions with real-time data. It cuts long-term costs — paper and storage, processing time, leakage and overhead; Estonia's digital government is credited with saving around two percent of GDP a year. It removes limits of geography and office hours and frees staff from repetitive tasks for real problem-solving. And it is the necessary step towards AI: first digitisation, then digitalisation, then digital transformation, and only then artificial intelligence, blockchain, IoT and advanced analytics. You cannot jump straight to AI without first digitising and digitalising your operations.
What AI is — and what Nigeria needs
AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems: learning, reasoning, self-correction, problem-solving and pattern recognition. Nigeria needs both kinds. Predictive AI forecasts — disease outbreaks, traffic, weather — for planning and prevention. Generative AI creates — content, code, designs — to scale solutions and bridge capacity gaps.
In 2022, working with the Federal Ministry of Communications and NITDA, we developed smart irrigation with remote control and soil-moisture monitoring, and smart poultry temperature control with alerts. If secondary school students can build IoT systems, Nigeria can scale them nationwide. If we can do it for farms, why not for roads, bridges, power grids and water systems?
Real-time intelligence on national infrastructure
We should know the condition of every major road in Nigeria: sensors detecting potholes, congestion, flooding and bridge integrity; citizens reporting with location data; analysis of what people discuss online. We should not be asking Google for data about our own roads. When you own the infrastructure, you own the data. When you own the data, you make better decisions.
A national super app
A single gateway for citizen–government interaction — one-time biometric registration, then access to digital payments, government opportunities, social services, certificates and licences, taxes, health records and education — so that Nigeria owns its data, controls its encryption, and achieves data sovereignty.
Tokens that cannot be diverted
In support for displaced persons, social programmes and subsidies, cash is diverted, allocations are resold and suppliers inflate prices. Government-issued, identity-linked tokens tied to a citizen's NIN, spendable only with approved vendors, eliminate diversion: the family spends tokens at approved food vendors, pharmacies and schools; vendors are paid directly; every transaction is visible in real time; and lasting supply chains form between beneficiaries and suppliers.
Security, accountability and services
Drones with AI image analysis turn yesterday's empty farmland and today's new structures into an automatic alert — proactive security instead of reactive response — and the same tools monitor crops, pipelines, erosion and illegal logging. A QR-code reporting system lets citizens report corruption anonymously, with encrypted evidence, tamper-proof timestamps and a public dashboard of action taken.
In education, AI can produce standardised content in Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and other languages, personalise learning, support teachers, deliver remote lessons and improve English proficiency. In health, it can monitor treatment adherence, check prescriptions for dangerous interactions, warn early of outbreaks, allocate resources and keep complete medical records that follow the patient. A "Monitor Me" system — voluntary, encrypted location sharing with a panic button and AI detection of unusual route deviations — can bring rapid response to kidnapping. And in agriculture, platforms can connect farmers directly to buyers, verify extension visits, track fertiliser so it reaches farmers, and publish fair market prices.
Utilities can be made accountable: sensors that timestamp every power cut and restoration, public dashboards of supply by area, predictive maintenance, accurate billing — and the same approach for water, waste and street cleaning. Time-series forecasting lets us plan schools, hospitals, power and skills before the need arrives rather than after the crisis. AI-assisted ambulance routing and pre-positioning can cut emergency response times dramatically.
YardCode: proof of presence
YardCode, a location-intelligence system, gives every location in Nigeria a unique, postcode-like identifier and verifies that inspectors, tax officers, extension workers, health workers and patrols actually visited the places they report — with timestamps, routes and location-stamped evidence feeding automated workflows. Combined with sensors, tamper-proof records, AI and drones, it makes field operations accountable.
Working with intelligence, not waiting for perfection
We face real constraints: unreliable power, limited internet, poor data quality, data silos, no sovereign data centres, limited technical capacity, and bureaucratic resistance. But we do not wait for perfect conditions. We start small with solar for critical systems. We build offline-first applications that sync when connected, and use SMS and USSD where there is no internet. We begin with the data we have and improve it. We mandate data sharing and build secure exchange platforms. We build sovereign data centres through public–private partnership, one region at a time. We train, partner and engage our diaspora, with knowledge transfer written into every consultancy. And we overcome resistance with pilot projects that deliver quick wins and make the new way easier than the old. Start small, learn fast, scale smart.
Knowledge transfer
The United Kingdom ties research funding to national challenges, brings businesses in from the start, and lets universities earn from commercial success. The United States uses agencies like DARPA and the NSF to fund high-risk research and make government the first customer — the origin of the internet, GPS and much more. Nigeria should tie research grants to national priority areas, establish technology transfer offices in our universities, reward researchers who commercialise, make government a pilot customer for proven local solutions, and involve industry from the first day of research.
A plan of action
In the first year: a National AI and Emerging Technology Council; a technology implementation task force; pilots of road sensors, YardCode, tokenised social programmes, the Monitor Me system and AI ambulance routing; the first sovereign data centre and national data standards; and training for public officers. Within three years: the national super app, sensor coverage of major roads, sovereign data centres in every geopolitical zone, digital land registries, AI-powered local-language education, national telemedicine, data protection enforcement and regulatory sandboxes. Within ten: complete digital government, data sovereignty, and Nigeria exporting its own solutions across Africa.
Systems over personalities
Our ultimate goal is to build systems so robust that it becomes impossible to fail through incompetence and difficult to succeed through shortcuts or corruption — where excellence is the default and continuity is guaranteed regardless of who is in office. When a minister leaves, the systems continue. When an officer is transferred, their successor inherits the full history. When corruption is attempted, the audit trail makes it visible. A child in rural Sokoto gets the same quality of AI-powered education as a child in Lagos. A farmer in Benue sells directly to buyers in Port Harcourt.
These technologies are not futuristic dreams. Many have already been piloted here in Nigeria. We have the laws. We have the talent. We have the vision. We have proof of concept. What we need now is political will, coordinated implementation, consistent investment and national ownership.
The future of Nigeria depends not on waiting for perfect people, but on building perfect systems that make good governance inevitable. The time is now. The technology is ready. Let us build those systems today.
Thank you very much.