Ministry Plans Computer Ownership Scheme For Varsity Students

The Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, said on Sunday in Abuja that the ministry would inaugurate a computer ownership scheme for students in tertiary institutions on Thursday, November 8, 2012.

Johnson who spoke in an interview with The Tide said that the initiative was borne out of the fact that students in tertiary institutions were underserved in terms of ICT.

She said that although government had set up computer labs for students in the past, the time had come for students to have access to internet-enabled computers that were not static in laboratories.

She said that it would be a scheme not only to provide computers for the students, but the main vision was to provide internet connectivity.

“We have just finalised the computer ownership scheme. It’s going to be launched on Thursday.

“Any student in a university that can prove that he is a bona fide student in the university and is in good academic standing would be able to get onto a portal that he will key in which school he is in, what his name is, what level, and that information would go to the university.

“The university registrar would then confirm that he or she is a bona fide student in that university, once that’s confirmed, two messages go out – to his guarantor: the person that is going to take the loan on his behalf and it also goes to the bank and to the local assembler.

“The guarantor gets a loan at a fairly reduced rate from the bank which we’ve been able to negotiate; the assembler gets the message that says: ‘produce this computer for this individual’ and hopefully within a few days the student gets his computer.

“Now this computer also comes bundled with the internet because today a computer is useless without connectivity to the internet.

“The innovative part of this is that this portal that I have just very quickly described to you was actually developed by three young Nigerians.

Johnson told newsmen that the scheme would begin on a pilot basis with 12 universities; six banks; support from the National Universities Commission, the Ministry of Education as well as the Ministry of Youth Development.

She said that the young Nigerians who designed the portal to be used to facilitate the acquisition of the computers participated in a competition packaged by the ministry for which they won 10,000 dollars made available by an Information Technology giant “Intel”.

Johnson said that the scheme would provide internet-enabled computers for the students and also bring about economic growth in the ICT sector as the computers would be assembled locally.