Kashifu Abdullahi has been appointed the new Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). His appointment was announced on Tuesday, August 20, by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity, Garba Shehu.
The appointment of Abdullahi as NITDA’s DG follows the nomination of Dr Isa Pantami, his predecessor, as a minister designate by the President.
As the DG, Abdullahi is responsible for leading NITDA’s implementation of policy guidelines for driving ICT and developing programs that cater to ICT related activities in Nigeria.
Kashifu Abdullahi, an indigene of Hadejia, Jigawa State, was born on February 21, 1980. He graduated from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, where he studied Computer Science.
Abudullahi went on to study Leadership and Management courses at Harvard University in the USA, University of Cambridge in the UK and IMD Business School in Switzerland.
He is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained strategist and the first Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) in Nigeria’s Public Sector.
He comes to the job with over 15 years of experience in IT operations, business transformation and solution architecture in the private and public sectors. Abdullahi is a certified project manager and solution architect with many professional certifications in networking, telecommunications, service management and solutions design.
Abdullahi started his career at Galaxy Backbone. There, he assumed various positions as Network Engineer, Technical Solution Design Team, IP Network Field Engineer, IP Operations Team, Senior Network & Lead, and Senior Solution Architect & Lead between from 2004 to 2013.
In 2014, he was employed as Technology Architect by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) where he worked on developing Technology Architecture Repository that gives a 360 view of the Bank’s IT infrastructure. Until his appointment, Abdullahi was a principal officer at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and also worked as Technical Assistant to DG of NITDA.
Abdullahi officially joined NITDA in 2017, and since then he has managed to accomplish some feats. In the second quarter of 2018, he managed the execution of a strategy that increased ICT contribution to Nigeria’s GDP by 13%.
Consequently, he helped the Federal Government saved over N16 billion from IT projects by overhauling the IT clearance process and encouraging shared services among agencies. Also, over 5% cost reduction were recorded during major projects where Abdullahi managed the procurement process.
He is a member of Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) and British Computer Society (BCS). He is also recognised by Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) as one of the 100 Leading Telecom and ICT Personalities in Nigeria.
With over 300 IT infrastructure already implemented under the guidance of Kashifu Abdullahi, his appointment as the DG of NITDA brings a lot of benefits to the agency.
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