President Muhammadu Buhari has conferred National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) with the prestigious “National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) Award”.
Buhari who chaired the Award Ceremony held on Thursday at the Banquet Hall, State House, Asokoro, Abuja disclosed that the award is in recognition of the NITDA high productivity, hard work and excellent service.
According to the National Productivity Order of Merit Award Committee, NITDA’s recommendation and subsequent nomination came after a vigorous selection process, and the Agency recoreded impressive and commendable achievements in facilitating the development of Nigeria into a sustainable digital economy.
“NITDA adheres strictly to information security and safety. The Agency’s proactive action in creating a robust incident Management Procedure, through which any irregular or adverse event that occurs and affects the normal functioning of a system is adequately dealt with, is a worthy accomplishment”, the statement read.
The Award which falls into the “2020 Organizational Category” highlights NITDA as the only government agency among other privately owned Organizations to be so recognized.
“Another commendable attribute of the agency is its commitment to improve and sustain productivity through training and retraining of staff. As a matter of policy, every staff of NITDA is expected to have at least forty hours of training within three years. This has resulted in improved competencies, knowledge and skills of the Staff”, the management of NPOM said.
The Director General NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa while receiving the award pledged the Agency’s continuous determination towards the expansion of the digital space in order to impact more lives of many Nigerians through the development of increased critical mass of IT proficient and global competitive manpower.
The National Productivity Order of Merit Award which was part of activities to celebrate the 19th National Productivity Day is an award of honour and dignity instituted by Federal Government to recognize hard work and excellence.
As the only (Government’s Agency) recipient of the National Award this year, and as an Apex IT Agency charged with the responsibility of creating an enabling environment where Nigerians will develop, adopt, and derive value from digital technologies, NITDA sees this rare honour as not just ‘a pat on the back’ but a challenge to intensify efforts towards its digital inclusion pursuits.