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Nnaji: Nigeria should embrace Artificial Intelligence *To join fourth Industrial Revolution
One of Africa’s foremost scientists, Bart Nnaji, has advised Nigerians to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) on an industrial scale in order to join the fourth Industrial Revolution now sweeping across the globe.
Nnaji, former Minister of Science who did his Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in AI at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the University of Massachusetts as a professor and Director of the Robotics and Automation Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts in the United States before his 27th birthday, made the appeal at the fifth convocation ceremonies of Michael and Cecilia Ibru University at Agbara-Otor near Ughelli in Delta State where he also received an honorary doctorate in science.
“AI has come to stay”, he asserted before a large audience comprising academics and researchers from other universities, as well as business executives, philanthropists, and community leaders, including the founder of the university, Mrs. Cecelia Ibru, its vice-chancellor, Professor Ibiyinka Fuwape.
“AI holds the key to our participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, driven by Big Data, Internet of Things, etc. We lost the First Revolution which is the Agricultural Revolution, the Second which is the Industrial Revolution, and the Third which is the Digital Revolution.”
Nnaji, recognised as one of the three top academic engineers in the world in industrial engineering before he returned to Nigeria in 2004, said that AI “has become ubiquitous especially with Generative AI which enables machines, that is digital systems, to do things faster, cheaper and better through repetitive tasks and, in the process, achieve greater autonomy.
“This means that they perform tasks without human control or human input, and this process keeps on improving rapidly,” he said, adding that unlike previous revolutions in history, Nigeria does not require massive resource infusion before leapfrogging into the 4th Industrial Revolution.
“The computer and the Internet have made things much cheaper, faster, and shorter, as a person can stay in the comforts of his or her home and still be in touch with cutting-edge technology, including AI,” he declared.
Nnaji, a winner of the Nigerian National Order of Merit, the nation’s highest honour for intellectual achievement, said AI is helping humanity in every area of life, ranging from healthcare to mass communication to business management to education to legal advice to creativity, crediting much of the new progress to ChatGPT4 launched last November by Open AI.
“It can write a novel for you and in your name within a few minutes, just as it can write an office memo or an advert jingle or a legal opinion on a complex matter or solve a mathematical or scientific question. All you need do is write the keywords, or a few words, on what you want and prompt the words, and in a jiffy, everything is all yours,” the AI and robotics expert stated.
While expressing delight that an increasing number of Nigerians are embracing AI, the erstwhile power minister advised the Nigerian government to immediately take concrete steps to make the country a significant AI participant, calling the United States, the United Kingdom, China, South Korea, the European Union, and India the frontline AI developers.
The Ministry of Communication and Creativity should be treated as a frontline development ministry, he argued, adding that the Nigerian Communication Commission and the National Office for the Acquisition of Technology should receive priority status.
He counselled the Federal Government to drastically reduce tariffs on certain information technology equipment or even abolish them, while calling for intensive training of IT specialists in both academic and professional institutions in Nigeria and abroad.
He added: “Let us borrow a leaf from India which prioritised Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and has consequently excelled in medical tourism, manufacturing, food security, and moon and sun exploration”.
Nnaji, who however, pointed out some of the dangers associated with AI, including job losses and deep fakes, added for instance that ChatGPT has replaced the customer teams in some companies because it is more efficient and faster in attending to customer needs than humans.
He named more dangerous consequences of AI use, saying: “You can use it to make extremely dangerous bombs, for instance”, he said, identifying plagiarism, misinformation, disinformation, invasion of privacy, pornography, blackmail, extortion, and even a possible nuclear catastrophe as well as a possible pandemic as some of the risks.
Nnaji, therefore, called on every government in the world to join hands with AI researchers and developers to create a global body to promote positive and safe AI use “just as the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957 in Vienna, Austria, has resulted in a safer world.”
No government in the world should be left behind in the project to coordinate and regulate AI because, according to him, a rogue AI developer can move to an ungoverned space and cause a human tragedy from there.
Those peddling fake and substandard drugs in Nigeria should be ready for the hangman’s noose, if the thinking of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), becomes the new law.
Mojisola Adeyeye, Director General of the body, who said on Friday that no other form of punishment is fitting enough, gave instances of where the application of such dangerous substances in form of health drugs, had led to fatalities.
Advocating that only stiff penalties would deter peddlers especially when deaths of children became involved, the NAFDAC boss, who appeared as a guest on The Morning Brief, a breakfast programme on Channels Television, said: “Somebody bought children’s medicine for N13,000 or something like that, another person was selling about N3,000 in the same mall.
“That raised an alarm. Guess what? There was nothing inside that medicine when we tested it in our Kaduna lab. So, I want the death penalty. Because you don’t need to put a gun on the head of a child before you kill that child. Just give that child bad medicine.”
Advocating that the National Assembly and the judiciary to make the proposal a reality, adding that the agency was open to partnering with lawmakers and other stakeholders on the matter, she added: “You cannot fight substandard, falsified medicine in isolation. The agency can do as much as it can but if there is no deterrent, there’s going to be a problem.
“Somebody brought in 225mg of Tramadol that can kill anybody, fry the brain and you give a judgment of five years in prison or N250,000. Who doesn’t know that that person will go to the ATM and get N250,000? That is part of our problem.
“There are no strict measures to deter [people] from repeating the same thing. We can do as much as we can but if our law is not strong enough, or the judiciary is not strong enough to stand up, we’re going to have a problem.
“So, our judiciary system must be strong enough. But we are working with the National Assembly to make our penalties very stiff. But if you kill a child by bad medicine, you deserve to die. We have a lot on our plate in stemming drug peddling.
“Withe about 2,000 staff members nationwide and limited funding, NAFDAC is constrained in carrying out its activities. So, when it comes to staffing, you’re right on the point. We are short-staffed and I am hoping things will be better.”
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Friday, made a fresh push for the creation of an electoral offences tribunal, to curb the cases of attacks on the Nigerian democratic system.
Mahmood Yakubu, INEC Chairman, told reporters at the commission’s first regular quarterly consultative meeting with the media that the tribunal had become important owing to the backlog of electoral offence cases.
He said: “A major obstacle to the speedy dispensation of justice in this regard is that electoral offences are not time-bound as is the case with post-election offences through the tribunals. Furthermore, they are solely prosecuted by the Magistrate and State High Courts in the jurisdiction where the alleged offences are committed,” the INEC chief told the gathering.
“No priority attention is given to such cases as the courts deal with a variety of other cases. Consequently, electoral offences are carried over from one General Election to another which may sometimes affect the diligent prosecution of the cases. It is therefore imperative to renew our call for the creation of the Electoral Offences Tribunal that have a specific jurisdiction and limited timeframe for the speedy dispensation of cases.”
Bemoaning the delay in the justice delivery system, citing the conviction of a returning officer in Akwa Ibom after six years in court, the INEC boss, said: “The recent successful prosecution of a Returning Officer in Akwa Ibom State is a case in point.
“The Commission has been diligently pursuing the case which arose from the 2019 General Election. In this particular case, it took nearly six years to achieve the successful prosecution at the trial court.
“Through our collaboration with the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) cases involving 774 alleged offenders from the 2023 General Election are being prosecuted. So far, successful prosecutions have been recorded in Kebbi and Kogi States while our collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on vote-buying has yielded similar results in Lagos, Kwara, and Gombe States. Yet, many cases are still pending.”
A mosque in Bushe community, Sabon Birni Local Government Area of Sokoto State, fell into the hands of bandits on Friday, after which 10 worshippers including the Imam were spirited away, adding to growing cases of terrorist attacks.
Channels Television reports that the gunmen invaded the mosque on Thursday while worshippers were performing their early morning Subhi prayer, quoting residents as saying that the gunmen had been molesting the people of the community for some time now, even with the presence of security agents.
Ahmed Rufai, spokesman of the Sokoto State Police Command, who confirmed the attack on Friday, said the police authorities were working with other security agencies to rescue the abducted victims.
A member of the Sokoto State House of Assembly, representing the Sabon Birni B state Constituency who also confirmed the attack, commended the security agencies for their timely intervention.
BREAKING: Death penalty for fake drugs! *NAFDAC to push new law at NASS
Give us electoral offences tribunal to take care of heist – INEC
Again, terrorists attack Sokoto, kidnap 10 worshippers at a mosque
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