Nov 14, 2008 (Daily Independent/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
As the Secretary General of the Information Technology (Industry) Association of Nigeria (ITAN) I should be celebrating over the reported purchase of 800 computers and other information technology related equipment by the House of Representatives. First, if this is true, it means more business for members of my association whose companies must have smiled to the banks. Second, it means that our advocacy to ensure the uptake of ICTs at government level could be said to be yielding fruits.

We have been campaigning that government officials should show more seriousness in the use of IT in governance, which would facilitate better service delivery, improve efficiency and effectiveness and generally make government structures more accessible to the ordinary people. In a way, this would have signaled the practical take off of e-governance in the country. But here am I, musing over the whole matter as one more act of doubtful integrity.

There are too many things that do not appear to make sense to me about these purchases. First, I wonder what the House would be using 400 photocopiers for. This is in addition to the Sharp digital copier machine that was reportedly procured at the cost of N465,000. Why should each member of the House have a photocopier? I can understand that each member should have a television set, and thus the 400 bought for them could make sense, but for photocopiers, this is a different matter all together. What will they be using them for? In this era of networking, the whole National Assembly can be served by a few heavy duty networked photocopiers.

The same can be said about the computers. The report said that 800 desktop computers were supplied to the House of Representatives. There are less than 400 honourable members in the House. This means that each member would get at least two desktop computers each. It may well be that the extra are for their aides. But why should they be buying desktops instead of laptops? Honourable members are highly mobile and are not the people who would stay glued in their offices working on their computers. They are more likely to be moving from one meeting to another, each demanding different sets of documents, which rather than carry them stuffed in briefcases, they could have them on their laptops. So how come that they decided to buy desktop computers rather than laptops?

There is also the matter of fax machines. The report says that 200 of these were bought. Again the simple question is what will the House be doing with this number of machines? In an IT dependent work place that the House of Representatives aspires to build (after all, what will they be doing with all the computers?) fax machine is of very little importance. Most documents now can be scanned and sent over as e-mail attachments. Anything that can be done with a fax machine can be done now with a scanner and internet. I am certain that there is internet access at the National Assembly.

Could it be that the House of Representatives lacked access to professional advice? Somehow, in a House that does not see the need to set up a standing committee on ICT, given its involvement in the development progress, and the very fact that there are many ICT-related government agencies that they need to oversight, it is would not be surprising that such a professional advice might not have been useful, even if it was made available to them.

But there are even more weighty questions about these purchases. The report said that the 800 units of desktop computers with LaserJet printers and UPS were supplied "at N300,000 per set or N240m total sum. Having not seen the specifications of either the type of desktop computers or the LaserJet printers, one cannot judge the price appropriateness of these purchases. But I do know that you can get the best of industry level desktop branded machines at less than N120,000.00. We can ask HP or any of these companies to give us quotations. Similarly you can get a very good general purpose LaserJet printer at N50, 000. As for UPS, I never thought they are significant enough in any ICT budget, but we may make do with N10, 000 per unit. So where are we near the N300, 000 price tag?

In a country where computer penetration is about two out of 1000 people, it is tempting to see the 200% penetration at the House of Representatives as an achievement. But we need to contrast this with the state of the primary and secondary schools in the constituencies of these Honourable members. How many of these schools have computers? How many have even a decent building that can house a computer lab? Yet we know that today, the education enterprise is critically dependent on access to computer.

Still there is another ambiguity that was not revealed by media reports. The National Assembly, at both the Senate and the House of Representatives had, not long ago, debated the Bill on Local Content. The bill, originally drawn to cover the petroleum sector, was expanded to include IT and other sectors of the economy. Its objective is to promote the use of local resources, both human and natural in the execution of public funded projects. In the specific context of ICTs, it means patronizing both locally produced computers as well as the use of locally developed software.

We are not told of the brand of the computers purchased by the House of Representatives. Are they imported, produced by the global hardware giants or are they from the local branded computer producers such as Zinox or Omatek? Still also, we do not know what sort of operating systems these computers are using. Are they locally produced or proprietary software of Microsoft? Or are they open source types? We need to know to what extent the House of Representatives has gone to actualize in its procurement practice, the local content imperative.

The investigation into this matter should not just stop at whether the prices were right or not, or whether money appropriated for some things have been misappropriated. It must go to audit the procurement practice of the National Assembly. Did the House follow the Procurement Act in its tendering processes? Has it followed the letters and spirits of the Procurement Act? Until then we must give a listening ear to Festus Keyamo in his dogged fight to bring the matter to the public tribunal.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]

Discussions: