Major PC brands including MAC, Dell , Compaq, HP, Samsung, and IBM and all the other foreign manufactured ones were early last month reported as banned in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) director general Prof. Cleopas Angaye however says there was no such ban.
Angaye told local press in Nigeria that he had told Nigerians to love local PC’s especially those with the same “durability and performance as the foreign ones” but did not ban the foreign brands.
Nigeria has a vibrant local PC manufacturing industry with brands like Zinox, Omatek, SpeedStar, Beta Computers, Briam Computers, UNITEC, Pragmatic, Geniac and Veda computers. With a population of about 150 million and about 23 million accessing internet on both PC and mobile, hardware manufactures see a huge market for their products and the alleged ban was likely a move to consolidate local sales.
The director however argues that banning was not what he said as competition is healthy even if Nigerian PC manufacturers deserved a position of advantage and control.
Buying Nigerian PC shouldn’t be a loyalty issue just because they are local or foreign but the standards of performance and quality have to be maintained by both the producers, he said.
“I insist that local products should be patronised. NITDA did not announce the ban on foreign products. What we said was the protection of local products in the midst of foreign products. I said completion is good,” the minister said.
The controversial ban speech is said to have been “a misquote” from his Lagos address in the mid May NITDA IT Hardware Standards Development retreat.
He had said: “There was need to benchmark practices and processes against international standards to make local IT products competitive and marketable within and outside the country.”
To support this earlier move, the president of the Computer and Allied Products Dealers Association of Nigeria (CAPDAN) Tunde Balogun,said Nigerian manufacturers were able to compete with foreign PC brands if favourable policies were put in place.
NITDA was moving strongly to promote the ‘buy-made-in-Nigeria’ Federal Government policy.
The government agencies and public schools were asked to spend the taxpayers money on local products. This seemed to be a great move to promote local hardware and software. The policy was however met by opposition from the ministry itself.
NITDA’s new stand is that for any agency to buy local products, it has to be as good as the foreign ones although it was not banning them.
Analysts say the authority’s change in position is prompted by the displeasure from the ICT minister Omobola Johnson.
Other reasons include complaints among the users in Nigeria against the local PC which they say heat up fast and are not durable.
The agency encouraged foreign manufacturers set up shop in the country so as the government spending flows back to the economy.
