 It is a very special pleasure to be here at this graduation ceremony of the senior executive course 41 of 2019 of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies. And I bring you the very warm felicitations of President Mohamed Abu-Hari, President Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And on his behalf, I congratulate you all, participants of the senior executive course, for your stellar performance and your elevation to the special privilege of member of the National Institute, MNI. I also congratulate family and friends, especially spouses, of the participants on this joyful occasion. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, NIPPS is our nation's foremost think tank. It is here that over the years, the major policy issues have been originated, debated, or preferred. And by bringing together some of the brightest and best Nigerian minds from the armed and non-armed services, business, labor, and the professions, to think through policy, ideas, and options, NIPPS affirms the eminently correct notion that our country is strong because of its tremendous human capital and richer by its diversity. It leads me to the seminal presentation that this course made yesterday to the President and members of the Federal Executive Council on the crucial subject of funding universal health care in Nigeria. Your in-depth assessment of the issues and your insightful recommendations deserve every recommendation. I think it is fair to say that a lot of the recommendations that you made were practical. And just as the President said yesterday, they certainly will go into thinking through our financing policy for health care. But more importantly, they will form the pillars of our health policy going forward. NIPPS must remain the go-to institution for thinking ahead for our nation's development. But let me then to say a few words about a phenomenon that we all accept will fundamentally determine the future of our nation and indeed our world. That is the technology revolution described, I think, accurately as the fourth industrial revolution. To quote Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, the first industrial revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The second used electric power to create mass production. The third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a fourth industrial revolution is building on the third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and the biological spheres. The speed and scope of the fourth revolution clearly outstrips all previous revolutions put together. The frequency and speed of breakthroughs is mind-boggling. And the disruption to every aspect of human existence, from health care to education, business agriculture, the professions, entertainment, the arts, security, warfare, sports, is as varied as it is profound. Take the smartphone, for example, the mobile phones that we all carry. It has 100 V veg times. That's 100 times more computing power than the computing power on the Apollo aircraft that landed men on the moon in 1969. The average smartphone, the one that we carry today, the average smartphone, the one that we carry today, has the capacity, most of them, to store and access more information than is available in most standard libraries. The phone, through various platforms, connects users to millions of other phone users all over the world, creating enormous market possibilities. And these possibilities, observed show up again, will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, material science, energy storage, and quantum computing. There is no question that practically minute by minute, every aspect of our lives is being transformed by technology. So there is a need for us to constantly interrogate our current position in the technology story. There's a need for us to determine what we need to do to leverage on technology to leapfrog in the development journey. So let's take data, for example. There's no doubt that data, big data, as is described today, which is the aggregation of information from and by various sources and its use in predicting consumer behavior or the present and future needs of communities is crucial. Technology is crucial to the collection and the optimized use of data. For us as a government, we recognize the potential benefits of government, especially the capacity to forecast accurately using data or for more accurate budgetary planning or enhanced security or overcoming the challenges of anonymity, especially for citizens empowerment through the ability to be able to bring more of our excluded population into an inclusive economic participation through digital identification of every citizen. This explains why the federal government's commitment to digital registration of all our citizens and legal residents is so profound. In turn, we expect that all of those who will register all of our citizens will be linked to civil, the civil registration of birth and death. In 2015, we began to harmonize existing databases of government bodies. So far, the harmonization process has increased the records of Nigerians in the central identity database from 7 million to more than 37 million. We are now adopting an approach that's similar to the Indian Adhar model, aiming to provide all Nigerians with a unique identity by leveraging existing enrollment facilities of government agencies, such as Exist Already, Immigration, the Federal Road Safety Commission, INEC, CBN, through BVN registration, and enforcing this enrollment of Nigerians for the national identification number so that we have accurate and up-to-date information on all of our citizens. With a reliable database of all Nigerians, we are positioned to attain our aspirations for financial inclusion, for delivery of social programs to the remotest parts of the country and the creation of a more effective e-commerce opportunity. Our N-POW program, and some of us would remember what the N-POW program is about, is the largest post-teshary employment and skills development exercise in the whole of Africa. And it is a tribute to the effective use of locally built and deployed technology platforms which enabled us to screen and test millions of applicants and finally engage 500,000 young Nigerian men and women. These young men and women are assisting with a shortfall of teachers in primary schools across every local government in the country, as well as providing agricultural extension services and public health services. Their training and instruction has been largely done by technology-driven platforms, either through their devices, their hand-held devices, which all of them have, or materials available on the digital platforms which are also open to them. With the advancement of technology in the sphere of artificial intelligence, access to knowledge by humans will no longer be regarded as a focal point of human endeavor. And this is important because in the past, we used to think only in terms of access to knowledge. But today, artificial intelligence makes it such that rather than just access to knowledge, it is now the application of imagination and innovation to knowledge, as well as envisioning the future that will be the key priorities for individuals, for corporations, and of course for governments. Our administration has had to envision that future with the dose of imagination and innovation we know that to thrive, our country needs the fusion of creative minds and creative enterprises on a scale that would make significant national and global impression. And that is why the NPAR creative was conceived. President Buhari's vision for Nigeria's youth population is clear and simple, that all young Nigerians can access a range of opportunities to improve their skills and meaningfully participate in productive and gainful existence, either in employment or through entrepreneurship. Our aspiration was to place Nigeria as a major player in the production of various digital media assets for various reasons, job creation for young people, a thriving productive economy, a bigger cultural influence globally. We've had to think creatively, and even if we say so ourselves, fast and big, the animation industry and the creative sector offered us a creative and big option to which we could immediately exploit. So globally, animation and VFX are used widely in many areas like TV, films, games, adverts, medicine, training, education, e-learning, even legal and insurance professions now use a lot of that. 3D visualization and an architecture, for example, and the list goes on. Animation by itself is labor-intensive and requires very high-skill levels. It's also lucrative for businesses and the workforce. So we envisioned the NPAR creative training to stimulate the development of creative and technology skills in young Nigerians in a studio environment with 2D and 3D animation, storyboarding, illustration, script writing, voice acting, and then post-production skills as well. In its first year, the program has trained 3,000 young Nigerians, 1,500 from the Southwest, South, South and Southeast, and those from those areas who are in Benin just about four weeks ago, learning these creative skills. Another 1,500 from the Northeast, the Northwest, and North Central have also undertaken a similar exercise. This training also encompasses a practical phase where each of the trainees across the various streams are organized into a studio and get to work together as a typical studio would. So we have script writers, we have storyboard artists, we have voice actors, we have animators, and post-production artists who will collaborate as a studio team and go on to produce educational and entertainment content. The idea is that some of them will end up as entrepreneurs from the next phase, while others will be absorbed by the industry. The opportunities are huge. The global animation industry is witnessing major structural changes. Important companies are outsourcing computer animation jobs in a big way. Any animation-related production in the United States of America or Canada is not exclusively produced in that country alone. Work is actually outsourced to many Asian countries like the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, and India. These Asian countries are not only cost-competitive, but they are also high on quality and availability of skills. India, much like Nigeria, can be and has honed attractiveness as an animation hub because it also has an English-speaking workforce that costs relatively low. From industry reports, the average monthly salary of an animation professional in India is about $600, compared to about $6,000 in North America. It is this arbitrage that we intend to leverage on, but as important in making creativity central to our government's next-level agenda, so is the fact that it also affords us an opportunity for us to tell our Nigerian stories through digital medium films, our fast-growing and high-exporting creative industries, particularly Nollywood and music, make a very significant contribution already to our economy, they drive employment and help us to share our unique perspectives with the world. Nigeria's animation industry can add more sheen in terms of special effects to Nollywood films and our musical performances and extend its aesthetic reach. These are, even if I say so again, myself, these are indeed exciting times for that industry. But how do we deliver Africa's largest social investment program, especially with technology on an even larger scale? So far, again, using locally-built and deployed digital platforms, we've been able to give loans to 2 million petty traders and hundreds of cooperatives in our trader money and market money programs. In partnership with the Bank of Industry, which handles the whole process of onboarding our beneficiaries to payment and collection of repayments, not only have we gathered the most reliable data of informal traders or petty traders across the country, but we have direct access to them for all purposes. Similarly, working with the World Bank and local technology companies, we have identified and continue to identify the poorest of the poor in every community, as defined by those communities themselves. Under our conditional cash transfer program, in addition, they are taught life skills and given, the life skills training is given to a nominated member of the household to enable them to make a living for themselves. But the private sector is thriving even more in terms of its financial inclusion opportunity because what they have done is that they have deepened their inroads, they have deepened the inroads that can be made into financial inclusion. So today we have many field tech companies who have leveraged the widespread availability of mobile phones and their associated usage, or usage patterns of the people. And as such, they are using artificial intelligence technology and they are able now to offer loans to many who are financially excluded by the formal banks based on their digital footprints. So today's entirely possible for people to get loans using their mobile phones. I was in Nassarar state a couple of weeks ago to see a farm which is run by a young man who used to be in the Niger Delta as a military. He now has a 3,000 acre farm in Nassarar state. He couldn't get loans from regular banks. But a lot of the field tech companies, two major field tech companies came together to give him loans without any collateral. The size of his farm today shows very clearly that even the way by which people will receive credit, the way by which business will be funded will be driven lightly by technology. And a lot of the banks have a lot of catching up to do. Yet another lightly untouched mind of well-paying jobs for young people is the area of business process outsourcing, PPO to use an acronym, is the farming out of certain non-poll functions of the company, the third party companies who can render such services cheaper and more efficiently. The type of services that are found out in this will include payrolls, accounting, telemarketing, customers of all such as troubleshooting for consumer technology devices, data recording, social media marketing, et cetera. Technology is opening up these opportunities today. There's a lady, Amal Hassan from Adina State, who provides knowledge and business process outsourcing for organizations within various sectors that want to outsource customer care. A company which is called Outsource Global has emerged as one of the leading Nigeria and indeed African contact center providers servicing the international market. So today, she's turning that company into a global PPO chance, creating over 1,500 jobs. Her success is an example of how technology can provide job opportunities for thousands of Nigerians. India, for example, India, for example, is estimated to provide more than 2.8 million jobs in the business process outsourcing industry. And it is very clear that Nigeria is the major job, Nigeria is a major rival to India in being able to provide a business process outsourcing. But the simple fact is that we speak English without a tonal accent. And that's much, much better than any of the Asian countries. So there's a big opportunity there. Healthcare is one of the areas where technology is recognizing value change. We're already in discussions with Nigeria medical experts in diaspora about the use of telemedicine and deployment of teaching aids by Wi-Fi enabled or USSB means to train paramedics in far-flung rural communities. And the just as I said earlier, there's so much work to be done by the course 41 with respect to financing of healthcare. And that also comes into play because practically everything that we need to do will involve financing. But there's so many examples of how technology is moving the pace of healthcare in Nigeria. There's a company called Lifepack run by Temi Gewa. It's a business that delivers blood from laboratories to hospitals across Africa now and using drone technology to make these life-saving deliveries even quicker. The founder, this lady called Temi, just won the technology and Dr. Ndial, Jack Ma's Africa Award last week, going home with $250,000 to help keep Lifepack going. Lifepack is an example of how technology can impact the healthcare industry and save millions of lives. For example, the World Health Organization, as Temi makes, that about 93% of malaria deaths occur in Africa and that about 266,000 people, 61% of them children under the age of five died from you know, malaria. In theory, with drone technology, vaccines, prophylactics, thousands of blood samples could be obtained from patients transported to that with the drones and necessary medication returned to patients in record time. This alone can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in rural areas. The point to be made is that we cannot remain where we are in development with what is available in technology today. The opportunities are great, we can simply live from and there is so much room for live from it. We don't have to evolve through the decades again. We're ready, we're ready position to take advantage of technology, to move development further. Agriculture is another sector that's been transformed by digital technology. I'm the report of NEPS, the 39th course, which is titled Science, Technology and Innovation of the Development of Agriculture and Agro-align Industry in Nigeria, notes how the use of technology and innovation has led to improved crop yields. We now have about 530 varieties according to the report of 39, 530 varieties of 37 crops developed as of 2014. Asaba yields have increased by 60% in the past three decades. Maze yields have increased at an average of 5.5% from the year between 2000 and the present days. Rice yields have increased by 30% from 2007 to the present day, with the use of Faroq-1, 4.4, and urethra, improved drought tolerant varieties. It is clear that agriculture does not have a remain at the subsistence level that it is in many parts of the country. There is great improvement going on. Great improvement going on in the quality of inputs, the quality and the console, the yields are getting better. Genotyping of the development of plants and pests and disease resistant crops and livestock, such as maruka, resulted in 80% increase in yields of cowpea loss. Nigeria's lead in the world production of crops, such as cassava, yam and kofu yam, has been assured by the research and by a lot of what we're seeing coming out of their culture industry. The prospects are huge for maximizing our culture for the government, but also for significantly improving the logistics of storage and the farm to market value chains. There are countries is poised, especially in the area of agriculture, with the research that we're seeing to make real growth and to make it difficult to grow. But the more exciting news that I close is the use of technology for more effective private sector financing at the border. For example, farm crowding and private grid had digital and cultural portals that crowd source funding for farms across Nigeria. So they pulled together money from multiple investors all using technology platforms to establish farms and hire smallholder farms. They then paid the investors dividends from the harvest from these farms. So it's evident that our rapidly increasing population and the advent of the foreign industrial revolution has posed several different challenges. But it is clear also that those challenges can be resolved. It is clear that we can do all minorities using technology. The education challenge is one. But it's very obvious now from the new curriculum that we're developing, the STEAM curriculum, science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths that we're developing today, that technology is going to enable us to be able to benefit maximally from technology because we're going through the primary school that's starting the training from the primary school through all the way to tertiary education. I think that we are forced to do some incredible things. For one thing that we must bear in mind and this is really my challenge to this, the problem of Nigeria has never been a shortage of ideas. Never been. There is no policy that is not somewhere that has not been thought of, that is not lying down somewhere. The problem has always been implementation of this. And this is the reason why it is my respect, it is the reason why my respect for you, NIPPS must graduate from a thinker to a do-it-all. And this is the case. And everyone who has thought through the development problems of our country realizes very clearly that this is where, where as a country, where as a one, where policy is not an issue. At a point where the rigor and discipline that is required to implement is what it's like and we simply have to find it. So I want to urge NIPPS that our subsequent studies must be based on the need to attain some level of understanding of how to implement, how to get things done. And one way to do so is to focus. So again, let me congratulate all of our participants for the very excellent performance and for the very excellent work that you've done. And also to congratulate the new Director General of the Institute, who have already shown that a lot more is going to happen here at the Institute and I thank you for that. Thank you very much. And also to congratulate the directing staff for the excellent work that you've done and that you're doing. I also want to say to the family and friends of our graduates, including those who are hired on an emergency visit. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Well done. Thank you very much. Now we give another round of applause to our participants.