‘Tech Shouldn’t Outrun Humanity’, First Lady Remi Tinubu Says At Qatar Summit

Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Remi Tinubu, has said that as the world continued its steady course into the digital era where innovations shape interactions and define ideas, it was time to balance the act, ensuring that humanity, not technology, leads.

According to a statement by her media aide, Busola Kokuyi, she made this submission while addressing the ‘Education Above All’ plenary session of the 12th World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha, Qatar.

Alluding to the success story of Qatar in the area of education, the Nigerian First Lady who shared the stage with her counterparts from Lebanon and Syria, was convinced that no religion forbids girls from being educated.

As such, she said the federal government of Nigeria was doing everything possible to provide every Nigerian child with the endless possibilities that education offers.

“Everything begins with education. We are doing all we can as a government to advance the education sector. We must collectively look at the bigger picture, knowing that Nigeria has a huge human capital resource and that is what we thrive on.

“Our youth are known globally, either in the arts, education, fashion, movie industry or agriculture. They are doing tremendously. and not only that, president Bola Ahmed Tinubu is treating Innovation and technology as the bedrock of human capital development.

“Nigeria, being an emerging economy, digital literacy has helped us a lot because it is faster, it reaches a lot more people. It also comes with its downside. Our young people are either using it for good or negatively.

“We believe we would keep empowering the young ones in this area and they would do better,” Mrs Tinubu told the gathering.

The chairperson of Qatar Foundation and host of the summit, Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser, harped on the need for education to do more in transforming lives and communities by connecting young people with new jobs.

Other speakers at the summit attended by over 150,000 participants from all over the world, harped on the need to see humans as the basis of various ongoing transformations in the world.

They emphasised that human values and ethics should determine the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), posing the question that progress would be worthless without human values.

The 12th World Innovation Summit for Education has as its theme, ‘Humanity.IO, Human values at the Heart of education’.