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The Internet sprouted from what was then a national computer network project called ARPANET, which was under the control of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency within the United States Department of Defence. The first countries to be connected to the Internet outside the U.S were England and Norway in 1973, and it was mostly used by universities, polytechnics and research agencies. Now, there are over a hundred countries with full Internet connectivity out of which only 11 are from the African continent (with the exclusion of Nigeria). Developments on the Internet in recent times had been very rapid, making it the world’s most advanced medium of communication with an installed base of over 50 million computers users linked worldwide, and an approximate annual growth rate of 2000 percent. The Internet is by far the fastest growing segment in the information technology industry. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, corroborated this fact when he said: “The surging popula...

Provided our public utilities fail to measure up to international standards, the question of national development will continue to face us. National development and technological advancement are closely related, and this inter-twinning relationship hinges primarily on information technology (IT). The slow pace of development in the country is not unconnected with our reluctant to wholly embrace modern technology policy. The absence of a clear cut science and technology policy thrust in national development planning and implementation is responsible for the confusion and inefficiency that has continued to plague our public utilities such as electricity and water supplies, telecommunications, and transportation. Banking and finance, trade and commerce, oil and gas, the mining sectors have continued to receive government priority attention. Science and technology, which is the main trust of industry, have suffered total neglect. Without the entrenchment of a sound science and technology p...