THE FUTURE AS IT IS TODAY – …NIGERIA IS NOT EVEN IDUSTRIALISED YET AND THE INDUSTRIAL AGE IS GONE!

This is a follow up to a previous post titled “Is Your Child Coding Yet?”

Have you made time to weigh the consequences of the day after the collapse of oil revenue, which experts estimate to be in 8 – 10 years’ time? For your consideration, below is a short list of developments with dire consequences in less than 10 years’ time for the Nigerian oil sector and its economy (just feel a hunch to keep talking about this some more):

(a) Major car manufacturers including Volvo, Peugeot and Mercedes Benz have announced plans to phase out the manufacture of petrol and diesel cars.

(b) President Emmanuel Macron of France has decreed that the manufacture and driving of petrol and diesel engine cars, will become illegal by 2040.

(c) Professor Tony Seba of Sandford University, a world-renowned economist, predicts that by 2030, 95% of people won’t own a private car, killing off the auto industry; and electric vehicles will devastate the global oil industry by the same date.

(d) UK will ban the manufacture and sale of all new diesel and petrol cars by 2040 (23 years time) in favour of electric cars, and restrict the operation of polluting diesel cars on British roads by 2020 (in 3 years time).

(e) Electric cars will be charged with solar energy – meaning that the days of oil revenue sharing in Nigeria will soon be over (Senator Ben Murray-Bruce).

How old are you in 10 years’ time, and where will you and your family run to if the oil dependent economy of Nigeria runs into trouble? This is a million-dollar question for us all.

Economies of the world have since moved on from fossil energy to renewable, bio friendly, non-ecosystem degrading forms of energy and virtually all these forms of energy are controlled by computing devices, programs, applications; some standalones on computers, some we (can) carry about on our mobile devices – phones, tablets, etcetera.

Industry players are switching lanes from floating oil servicing companies to leveraging on the current wave of information revolution by setting up software developing companies. A lot of them are around now. Fact is there are many problems to solve with software than there are programmers world over, so the market is rife for anyone to come in and shine.

Point is let’s begin to point our children to problem solving than coming out of school with good grades because that eventually will make them better global citizens in this age of information revolution – it is here with us and we can’t shy away from it pretending not to know.

Nigeria really did not meet up with even the industrial age, don’t know if we were asleep when it took off that till today we still talk about industrializing the country.. kinda makes me laugh. Well this is another grand opportunity to make a mark.. The government can’t do it (alone, they will want us to say). Yes! Because they are lazy. 

Citizens, parents, insist your children learn to code!