Have times changed in Nigeria or what?

Here is a copy of a letter I sent to our former President Olusegun Obasanjo when he was in office in year 2000. The question to my fellow Nigerians is, has anything changed concerning what I stated in the mail? If so, what are the changes and how have they changed? Enjoy  reading:

Hello Your Excellency,

My name is Olatokunboh Kuti currently residing in the United States. I am a Systems/Software Engineer for Bell Atlantic (Now Verizon Communications) a Telecommunication Giant in the States. My wife and I also run an Information Technology company-http://www.siftthru.net based in Bowie, Maryland (USA) and Lagos. The purpose of my e-mail is to share with you my concern about (Nigerians at home) lack of interest and enthusiasm in the Information Highway. I noticed that among the 36 States that we have in Nigeria, only a handful of them, 3 to be precise, have web presence. Notably, Delta, Lagos and Nassarawa, and of course, the Federal Government. What I do not understand is how these states tend to promote their States to foreign Investors particularly those in the Western Hemisphere. The states are supposed to be the leading forces and models for the public and private companies in Nigeria. Without presence on the Internet, there are only a few options for the investor to research or learn about the states and what they can offer. By having websites, the investors or visitors to Nigeria will be able to go to these Web Sites to view and read information about the states from their offices or homes. As your excellency is aware of, most of what the Westerners hear or read about Nigeria are all negatives, the only way we can at least tell them about our states and what we can offer them in terms of infrastructures, resources and manpower is by having a place where we can put data and images about our respective states for them to peruse without any pressures. It will do our country a great deal of good if this is encouraged and implemented.

We Africans have been behind in every aspect of innovations in the past and it seems we have not broken the cord. Since this is a new millennium we need to start planning for the future so that we can be major players in the Information Highway. We do not want to put ourselves in a situation where we continue to bring in foreign expertise to develop our infrastructures which in turn tend to have negative impact on our foreign reserves. With this in mind, we need to implement a strategy towards achieving this goal. We may have to study these countries like US, Japan and India. Most of the programmers in the States (US) are from India, I think their effort should be greatly applauded for producing computer engineers/analysts than any other country in the World.

I will like to take this opportunity to give Kudos to the Governor Of Nassarrawa, I was very impressed with him when he was featured on the Radio in Washington DC. The Governor conducted himself gracefully and also spoke with confidence. We could tell that he is well informed about what he was talking about. Hats off also to Dr. Kumolu-Johnson, the former President of Rotary Club, Lagos State. I am very impressed with his initiatives about the implementation of  (now late) Vehicle Recovery Systems in Nigeria along with the Inspector General of Police. They need to keep up the great work. I had the opportunity of meeting him via my Brother In-law while I was in Nigeria last December. As our contribution, my company promised to promote the organization on the Internet. We designed and continue to maintain a Website for the Organization (Vehicle Recovery Organization- http://www.siftthru.com/vro ) at no cost to them. This is what needs to be encouraged in Nigeria, money should not always be the issue. Every Nigerian need to continue to support and promote our Great Country.

Your excellency, since you are a busy man and I commend the great job you are doing with all the complexity of our great Nation, you do not have to reply you could just send an acknowledgement to let me know that you received this E-mail.

Thank you sir and keep up the good work.

Sincerely,

Olatokunboh (Toks) Kuti

KEK Technology Inc.

http://www.kektech.net/ / http://www.kekdomains.com/ / http://www.kekhosting.com/