Making a case for e-business

Operators in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in the country, have called on Nigerians to adopt the use of e-business so as to make their transactions easier and acceptable worldwide.

In an interview with NEXT, Lanre Ajayi, president Nigeria Internet Group (NIG),said, "The state of e-business in Nigeria is not impressive as very few businesses are online and the use of technology in these businesses is not adopted. Internet usage is very minimal as people think it's very costly to run their business online."

According to him, there was a need for professionals in the sector to encourage Nigerians to recognise the essence of e-business. "What NIG needs to do, is to intensify our campaign to inform Nigerians on the need to get their businesses online and the need to drive their businesses through Internet technology. We are organising seminars and advocating for government policies especially on e-business. Our hope is that businesses would set up their website and integrate e-payment to the sites, for people to easily pay for goods and services online," he said.

However, Destiny Amana, the managing director of Icecool Contracts Ltd said that the use of Internet to showcase businesses is not as important as effective service delivery to customers. He said, "E-business is more than having a website for your business. Using the tools can make your administrative and operational activities more efficient though. People can access the Internet to source information about their industry, suppliers and products, general research, streamlining their ‘traditionally' physical transactions into electronic transactions."

Government's role

Some Nigerians are of the view that the existing electronic payment system only makes transactions more difficult."When I wanted to apply for international passport for my family, last year. I tried the payment process through the internet and it did not work after several days of trying we had to come to the immigration office to queue for the passport process. We did not get them until after two weeks," said Mathew Okoro, a business man.

"The officers paid the money into their account for us, later they said the bank network was down and could not access the confirmation and we paid more than the required amount for the passport."

These difficulties, according to Mr. Ajayi are due to the newness of the e-passport system in the country. "At the beginning of any new e-business process there must be hiccups, but as the process continues government would improve on the service as the whole idea is to make life easy for Nigerians," he said.

"It is more convenient to pay for goods or services from your houses or offices than to queue for such services. If there are hiccups it should not be an avenue to encourage government to dump the service but encourage government to improve on it."