The immediate past Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Engr. Aliyu Aziz, has paid glowing tributes to a former Minister of Defence, Prof. Iya Abubakar, for being the first to purchase the first largest computer in Africa, just to give Nigeria that Big Brother stature in the continent.
Born on December 13, 1934 in Belel in the Maiha Local Government Area (LGA) of Adamawa State, Nigeria, Abubakar was Minister of Defence between 24 October 1979 and January 1981.
He also had served as Minister of Internal Affairs between 1981and 1982.
He said: “I am particularly privileged to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Iya Abubakar Computer Center – an incredible institution that was far ahead of its time. It is astonishing to recall how he procured what was then the largest computer in Africa, a CDC Cyber 72 series with a remarkable 64 kilobytes of memory.
“This technological marvel was accompanied by a line printer capable of printing 1,200 lines per minute, a digital plotter, and a suite of high-level programming languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, PASCAL, BASIC, and APL, among others
