Nnamdi Ojiego
The Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Ms Josephine Tapgun has described the efforts of Nigerian indigenous manufacturers in meeting the production needs of the country as magical. She said the hardworking spirit of many Nigerians has improved the quality of locally produced goods.

The minister was making the statement based on the massive production capacity she met on ground at Omatek computer Factories in Lagos when she visited last week.

Touring round the Omatek factories at the weekend, the Minister described the development she met on ground as “wonders”, promising that her ministry was doing everything possible to protect the indigenous industries. “We want to add our weight on local industries to make sure that they succeed because that’s only way we can develop as a nation, by looking inwards and patronizing our products. So, nobody will develop Nigeria for us. If we do not buy our products, nobody will buy it for us. ”.

It was as if the Minister was reinforcing the opinion of the Joint Action Committee on ICT Awareness and Development, JACITAD, an umbrella body of ICT media professionals in Nigeria, which at the same time called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to give teeth to the local ICT sector by awarding the contract of procuring the DCC machines to local OEMs.

Ms Tapgun expressed worries that despite the high quality of made in Nigeria products, so many Nigerians still patronize foreign goods to the detriment of local ones, stressing that this trend has contributed to the dwindling fortunes of indigenous industries. According to her, the unfortunate thing was that some of the products brought in from outside the country were inferior to made in Nigeria products.

“As I go round to see things myself, I discovered that our products are of high quality, a quality that can stand anywhere competitively in the world.

So, in any case, we are not making the wrong choice by buying those products because they are of high quality”, she revealed adding that the industries suffer because Nigerians do not believe in themselves. “We tend to undermine our products by going for substandard products simply because they are foreign. But now is the time to look inwards and patronize our products.”

On what the federal government is doing to help the indigenous firms overcome their financial challenges, the Commerce Minister said President Goodluck Jonathan was passionate and committed to assisting indigenous manufacturers.

This, the minister said the president shown by approving over five hundred billion naira (500,000,000000) through the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN as intervention fund for indigenous industries.

“This fund was approved by the government as intervention fund for production, manufacturing and agriculture. So this is actually the way govt is tying to help the local manufactures and all we are asking from them is to zero in on this intervention funds because it has very little interest to it for them to really succeed in expanding their businesses”

She however, commended Omatek Computers for providing Nigerians with quality computer sets and urged them to continue to strive for the best. “So much has been put in here and the products are good.”

Earlier in her speech, the Group Managing Director, Engr Florence Seriki said her desire was to make Omatek a household name in the country through its quality products. She said the reforms in the banking sector has made it difficult to access funds from the banks.

Engr Seriki revealed that Omatek has won over 100 awards both local and international as a result of the quality of their of their products. She however, reassured their customers that the company would never compromised on its quality notwithstanding the funding challenges.

INEC: Nigerian ICT sector needs some teeth — JACITAD
The Joint Action Committee for ICT Awareness and Development ( JACITAD), the umbrella body for ICT media professionals, last week, called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to consider local original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the award of its Direct Data Capture(DDC) machines.
It said the contract provides the kind of opportunities needed by the ICT sector to maintain its current development.

The organisation issued out a statement after an emergency meeting on critical industry issues in Lagos on Monday. The association said that there are many IT companies in Nigeria that can meet INEC’s urgent need for 120,000 DDC machines, listing Zinox, Omatek, Brian, Beta Computers, NIGCOMSAT and a host of others as capable local companies that can jointly or individually deliver the INEC mandate.

“We are suggesting that INEC should invite the local OEMs for interview and find out how they can put them together so as to deliver quality service if INEC cannot leave the task with only one of them.

We also want to see a situation in which the Institute of Software Practitioner of Nigeria (ISPON) is also involved in the exercise to give a list of companies that can partner with NIGCOMSAT, a Federal Government’s agency, so that they can all deliver flawless software solutions,” the statement pointed out.

The group said that going abroad to look for what we already have in the country is an act of economic sabotage which will not only spell doom for Nigeria’s ICT sector but will also rub off negatively on other sectors of the economy which ICT has been driving since the advent of the current ICT revolution.