Indigenous intellectual Elites And Challenges of Information Technology:
THE ABC TRANSPORT’S EXPERIENCE

Indigenous intellectual elites are those individuals found at the regional and sub regional levels who are educated by the standard of western values, norms, and orientation. Information Technology, otherwise known as globalization or Villagisation of the globe, is the term invented recently to describe the latest form (indeed the contemporary form) of relationship between peoples and societies or empires and world empires. This asymmetrical relationship between these groups, the strong and the weak in their social economic and political groups as well as origin growth, achievement, decline or transformation from one form to other, is determined by the degree of access to two types of technologies viz: material technology and social technology. By material technology, we mean things as fire, stone and metal tools, machines, industries and electronics. Social technology refers to such facts as language, ideology, family, clan, tribe, slavery, feudalism, the nation state and transnational corporations.

According to Professor Tom Bradford of University of England, imperialism and dominion have been characterized not by the invention of physical technologies such as mining, metallurgy, irrigation, architecture, commerce. More importantly, the invention of such technologies generated by three major institutions war, slavery and state. This material technology led first to the industrial revolution, which involved the invention of devices and this extended the human musculature- devices that relates to physical manipulation and to the electronic revolution, which involved an extension of the human nervous system radio and telephone as an extension of the ear, film as an extension of the eye and ear, and of course, the computer as an extension of the brain.

The electronic revolution with its double impact on communication and information and eventual revolutionary force phrased “Information Age” synonymous to the age of globalization, which placed the western elites ahead of their counterparts, “the indigenous elites.” David Held talks of the “elites” of this world engaged in such areas as business, polities, law, entrepreneurship and science being those at home in the global capitals, leading hotels, major cultural centers and thus having easy access to use these different facilities; “unlike peoples of the sub Saharan, villages as well as those elites living in the regional and sub regional Urban and Suburbs that constitute the margin of some of the central power structure and hierarchies of the global order, who are technologically held still-bound and “intellectually conscripted.”

Again, Tom Stonier on this note asserts that Information is the coin of power in the globalised age just as money or ownership of land used to be in the earlier years. Again, the last of these forces, probably the least, has been described as the rise of brand new human and other problems, which old nation-state with their restricted horizon and combative tendencies were unable to address, following their structural inadequacies, institutions and laws which have been superceded by the new “giant” entities in the new world order.

David Held, buttressing further on the new world order, said “what accountability and control can citizens of a single or group of nation state have over international actors like multi-national corporations (MNCs) and over international organizations, like World Bank who are the inventor and peddlers of the globalization phenomenon that is dominating the third world and sub-Saharan regional bloc as well as all the doings of major business concerns at the same levels. This millennium hallowed technological gateway need to be embraced by all and sundry for meaningful technological growth.

Associated Bus Company Plc, as a business conglomerate and major actor at the West Coast, need to rise to the challenges of the globalised technology, sequel to the massive expansion programme, which the company has embarked upon, long ago. These challenges arise from the smattering computer knowledge among some line staff and other manpower staff of ABC Transport. This indifference to personal or self-development among some staff is a phobia that must be conquered with a positive spirit. Beyond this peripheral factor, is the technical problem such as unsteady power supply and lack of adequate facilities as it relates to manpower.

Above all, the ABC Transport’s intellectuals should be empowered to completely overcome the myth and apron strings of globalization ideology and technology. Overcoming this myth will pave way for our manpower intellectuals to appreciate quantitatively, the skills and techniques available in web technology. Such technology includes their ability to undergo different courses through on-line facilities at little or no cost, networking of management policies and implementation procedures, computerized process of solving automobile/mechanical faults in all ABC Transport’s workshops as well as computerized IT on-the-job-training for all staff at different junior, intermediate and managerial levels. This new technological approach will surely be a paradigm for Associated Bus Company Plc manpower intellectuals who are engaged in the quest for the company’s expansion in a congenial environment.

                                                                                    - Iwunze J. I.