Benue Begins Digital Training For 40,000 Civil Servants

Benue State Digital Infrastructure Company (BDIC) has commenced the training 40,000 civil servants and the 23 local government areas on the use of digital tools and e-governance platform.

The managing director, BDIC Terwase Grande, who disclosed this in an interview with journalists, explained that BDIC is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) established by the Benue State government to drive the state’s digital transformation agenda.

He said, “As of today, over 4,800 civil servants have been trained in areas such as ICT fundamentals, digital workflow systems, and enterprise platforms with weekly training numbers steadily increasing.”

He said, “We have also commenced the training of 23,000 youth (1,000 per LGA) through the ongoing 3MTT/BDIC Digital Skills Program, with pathways to employment and enterprise through these and related programmes, digital infrastructure will become a direct engine of employment, empowerment, and wealth creation in Benue State.

“I am pleased to publicly announce to you that with the economic development vision of Governor Hyacinth Alia, BDIC is committed to create over 100,000 digital jobs across Benue State within the next three years.”

He explained that these jobs will be created through digital outsourcing centres and gig work platforms for remote employment in areas like data labelling, digital customer service, and AI training.

He added, “They will also have a start-up support, incubation hubs for tech-driven entrepreneurs and creatives, local manufacturing of digital devices, outsourcing centers and computers, tablets, kiosks to support IT hardware assembly and maintenance services, e-commerce and smart agriculture platforms, enabling farmers and traders to access wider markets.”

He maintained that investments in local digital hardware production exceeding $170,000, for the manufacturing of laptops, fingerprint scanners, tablets, smart projectors, and self-service kiosks, projected to generate over ₦6.6 billion revenue and reduce digital hardware dependency, are in top gear.

Gbande enumerated plans to partner with the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) to establish NUJ Digital Skills Labs, in collaboration with other public and private sector partners, training journalists on digital content creation, cybersecurity, mobile journalism, data storytelling, and AI tools, supporting the launch of community based digital news and reporting platforms, creating a pipeline for young journalists to participate in BDIC innovation labs and ICT fellowships.