Laptop For Every Nigerian Child

THE UTOPIAN $100 MIT LAPTOP

The good news is music to my ears as you can see in the current news column on the sidebar. And it has been reported since yesterday.That every Nigerian child will benefit from the "One Laptop-One Child Initiative" for only $100 per laptop.

These are the notes from the news report.
The President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is very excited and thrilled by the break-through of Professor Nicholas Negroponte and his team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States for the initiative.

President Olusegun Obasanjo met the brains behind the laudable and remarkable achievement in Tunisia, at the second phase of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS-05. And a meeting has been scheduled between them and the Nigerian top government officials.

NIGERIA and five other countries have been named the first beneficiaries of the One-Laptop-One-Child Initiative. Others are Egypt, India, Brazil, China and Thailand.

Chairman of the initiative, Professor Nicholas Negroponte who disclosed this in Tunis Wednesday, said the laptops would be distributed through various governments of benefitting nations.

Also, Nigeria has redeemed its 0.5 million Euros (aboout N87.5 million) to the Digital Solidarity Fund, President Olusegun Obasanjo has said. He spoke in Tunis.

Initial distribution of the laptops is expected by first quarter of next year.
But there are skeptics and cynics.

Negroponte's dream may not match reality, for all its Utopian promise

It's one of the great Utopian visions — universal access to the world's knowledge without limitation of wealth, location or social position. The logical conclusion to universal literacy and universal suffrage: nobody can argue against it as a force for good.

Negroponte has an attractive vision. Then again, MIT's Media Lab has never lacked vision. It should shame nobody to ask about delivery, appropriateness and long-term strategy. Utopias are never cheap.
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020505,39237331,00.htm

But, I sincerely hope that millions of Children in Nigeria will benefit from this initiative. Because, my suspicion is that as usual, the very greedy and selfish Nigerian Middle Class and Upper Class will hijack these subsidized laptops and divert them to their own kids in their Ivy League private schools and High Schools and the millions of the less privileged kids of the poor majority will never receive any of the laptops.

I can bet with President Olusegun Obasanjo that the rich and more privileged Nigerians in private and public offices will hijack these laptops meant for the children of the poor who have been suffering great deprivations all these years.

I want proven Nigerians of integrity and probity like Rev. Gamaliel Onosode, Dr. Dora Nkem Akunyili and Dr. Pat Utomi to be given the responsibility for the distribution of the laptops before they are hijacked or stolen midway by the Nigerian kleptomaniacs in the corridors of power from Lagos to Abuja.


I am overwhelmed by this break through that will propel an Internet revolution in Nigeria as every family in Nigeria should be able to connect their computers to the Internet. And the intellectual enlightenment and empowerment of the new generation of Nigerians will accelerate the advancement of Information Technology for sustainable human capital development in Nigeria.