Nija Chat: NITDA Unveils New Social Media Platform

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE has unveiled NIJA Chat, a messaging, gaming and lifestyle app which he said will help build public digital infrastructure and boost the Nation’s economy.

Inuwa who made this known after unveiling the Nija Chat Application by iCELL in Abuja, said it is a clarion call to all Nigerians both home and the diaspora to embrace the tech to encourage more of such innovative ideas to emerge from the country.

According to the Director-General, the journey which started six months ago when the iCELL team solicited NITDA’s support to build the application was one that the Agency was pleased to be a part of.

“NITDA worked hand-in-hand with them to refine and accelerate the thoughts, as well as offered technical support to build this app”,Inuwa said.
“This is a futuristic app because frontier applications are increasingly being promoted in the world today”.
“So, you can personalise your experience and have everything done in this particular app, rather than hop from one app to another just to do the same thing”, the DG affirmed.

The NITDA DG joined the team to test the features of the app by making some local/international audio and video calls on the messaging app, and afterwards stated that it was indeed a fantastic experience.
While attributing the feat to Nigeria’s young and talented population, Inuwa said with the right environment, which the government is constantly working on to harness the amazing potential of the Nation’s digitally natives, the ‘Digital Nigeria’ quest would be attained sooner than later.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has mandated our Ministry to accelerate Nigeria’s economic diversification by enhancing productivity in critical sectors, and with apps like this one, it will pretty much help in that direction”.
“Our SMEs can use this application to promote their products and services, communicate with customers and suppliers”, Inuwa said.
Whereas the official launch of the app is billed for 1st January, 2024, the DG offered some observations regarding the app that need to be worked upon as he also expressed the hope that the next stage should be to build a payment wallet on it.
“When the payment wallet is brought onboard, anyone can receive and send money easily and this will help promote the cashless transactions which is ultimately, the future we are building”.