NITDA to partner Nigerian Army for Simulation Centre

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has indicated its willingness to form an alliance with the Land Forces Simulation Centre Nigeria (LFSN), a formation of the Nigerian Army, to establish a simulation centre for the military.

The NITDA Director-General, Kashifu Abdullahi, disclosed this when he hosted the Director-General of LFSCN, Garba Abdullahi, at the agency’s hadquarters in Abuja.

The NITDA chief observed that the adoption of technologies in executing warfare has become pronounced more than ever before as wars are not being fought by physical presence but through technology.

“We can work with you to develop a simulation centre where arms and ammunition could be simulated and used for training,” he said.

He stressed that NITDA is organising an innovative challenge for youths to come up with home grown innovations and it can integrate the idea of coming up with simulating military hardware for the centre.

“We are working on innovation challenge. We can call on people to compete and bid for such ideas and we work with them to develop something. NITDA will be willing to assist the startups to come solutions that can be developed into products, he added.

He stated further that the agency will also help the formation to build the capacity of its personnel on identified area of skill gaps.

“On capacity building, we can do that. NITDA’s mandate empowers us to build the digital skills of Nigerians. We urge you to work with our team to identify your capacity building needs. We can do some training online through our virtual learning platforms and some could be done physically.”

He said, “We have a lot in common because technology makes your work efficient and effective. We do research and develop the IT sector. Our regulations cut across all sectors because everybody needs technology to survive. So you can avail us the type of digital capacity you would want to build so we can come up with it or develop a generic curriculum for you in those areas.”

Earlier, Mr Abdullahi, a major-general, said that the centre decided to visit NITDA to advance discussion on possible areas of interventions it could get from the agency, adding that war is now being technologically fought than before.

He said that new strategies to prosecute war are now accelerating the acquisition of digital skills, adding that simulation training has become imperative in order to save resources for government. He said, “a trainee soldier would require 10,000 round of ammunitions before he could perfect shooting and the resources to provide that is not available hence the need to adopt simulation for training.”

Mr Abdullahi sought the intervention of the agency on provision of hardware and software ICT systems, development of customised software-based simulation systems, research industry linkage to assist LFSCN in building adequate capacity of its staff towards the creation of localized simulation platforms.

He also advocated for joint NITDA/LFSCN technology acquisition programmes which could be achievable through organisation of conferences and workshops that are aimed at promoting development of indigenous simulation systems and provision of adequate internet bandwidth support for the centre to enhance simulation activities.