Digital Governor 2020: Tambuwal Beats Lagos, Delta Counterparts To Emerge Winner

Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, has clinched the 2020 National Information Technology Merit Award (NITMA), the highest award ensemble for the Information Technology (IT) industry in Nigeria coordinated annually by the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), after a keen contest between him and his Delta and Lagos States colleague governors.

With the award, Tambuwal became the first governor in Nigeria to receive the Digital Governor of the Year Award at an event held at the MUSON Centre, Lagos State Nigeria on Thursday.

Adjudged a technophile of remarkable note by the organizers, going by his superlative performances in the IT sector, Tambuwal garnered majority of the votes cast online from across the country as a result of his achievements in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in Sokoto State.

These achievements include the establishment of an ICT Directorate in the state in 2015, deployment of techno-savvy resources in COVID-19 interventions made by the state, contributions to the NCS, eGovernment-related initiatives, computer aided E-education/awareness efforts and global ICT engagements.

Being the first governor to appoint a Director General on ICT in Sokoto State, within five years (2015-2020), the Tambuwal administration in Sokoto has established an ICT Directorate, institutionalized same in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as the 23 local government areas of the state.

Making ICT an integral player in the state Civil Service, his administration recruited Computer Sciences/ICT graduates, established and commissioned the first All Mackintosh ICT Resource Center in Sokoto and bankrolled the training of 23,000 civil servants on ICT.

In the period under review, the governor led Sokoto to become the first state to host 1000 entrepreneurs on live training program, increased budgetary allocation to the ICT sector from N80 million to N1 billion per annum and led Sokoto to win the first and second positions on e-Nigeria in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

Other accomplishments of the governor are the drafting of a bill for the establishment of Sokoto ICT Development Agency, biometric enrolment of all state-sponsored foreign students, primary school teachers and civil servants; training of 10,000 women on various components of ICT skills in the state and hosting of Google in the state, to launch the first Google Digital Skills Training in Nigeria.