Meet Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, the new chief of IT Policy in Nigeria

Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, a  professor of Computer Information System at the Islamic University of Madinah, has been appointed new Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the nation's IT implementing agency.

The new NITDA boss, who is among the new chief executives appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari in 13 Federal Government agencies, takes over  from Dr. Vincent Olatunji, who has serve as Acting Director General in the last nine months.

The new NITDA chief was born and grew up in Gombe State. He completed his first degree in Computer Science in 2002 at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi. He obtained a Msc. Computer Science in 2008 and Master of Business Admin. (Technology) in 2010 at ATBU afterwhich he proceeded to the United Kingdom to obtain a PhD.

Before his appointment, Pantami lectures at Computer Information System department at the Islamic University of Madinah, and the new NITDA DG is acclaimed as the first Nigerian ever to teach in the university in more than 63 years of its existence.

NITDA, created in April 2001, is responsible for implementing the Nigerian Information Technology (IT) Policy and coordinating general IT development. The agency was mandated by the National Information Technology Development Act (2007) to create a framework for the planning, research, development, standardisation, application, coordination, monitoring, evaluation and regulation of IT practices, activities and systems in Nigeria.