According to a report released by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, scanners needed to view cargo contents at the Lagos Ports Complex to avoid time-wasting manual clearing of over 4,166 20-foot containers daily, have not worked in the past two years.
“It is, therefore, imperative for the Federal Government to expedite action on the procurement of scanners for the ports to end physical examination of cargoes and make the system technology driven,” LCCI said.
The dysfunctional scanners at the ports appeared as an isolated case until it was juxtaposed with other cases of technology evasion in Nigeria.
For a long time, electricity consumers were on the warpath with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, and Distribution Companies, DISCOs, over provision of meter to them to avoid exploitative estimated billings.
From all indications, it appeared that the DISCOs were reluctant to provide consumers with meters, again, to “make the system technology driven”. They seemed to prefer to arbitrarily assign bills to consumers and compel them to pay for darkness.
Another, and perhaps the gravest instance where adoption of technology was evaded in Nigeria was the refusal of President to sign into law the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, 2018, which would have allowed compulsory use of card readers and electronic transmission of results that could have made the process more transparent.
In all these, the sole beneficiary is corruption. “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it,” wrote Frederic Bastiat.
Corrupt people in a corrupt country evade technology in order to sustain corruption. They avoid the internet, for instance, because it captures their digital footprints. They prefer to have all their records and documents in hard copies so that when they burn down the house where the papers are stored the evidences of their crimes will go up in flames.
Like the Luddites of 19th century Europe who destroyed machinery they believed was threatening their jobs, many people are currently fighting technology and other advancements because they believe it will expose their crimes.
No wonder some people are of the opinion that many of the problems facing the country today – lack of electricity and other infrastructure, poverty, insecurity, unemployment, etc., are all deliberately inflicted on the people by some people who profit from them.
The solution is for us to repent and desire to give our people good life by adopting appropriate technologies and building strong institutions as bulwark against corruption.
