Attending the 2nd edition of the New Media Conference at the Hague in the Netherlands did not hold much promise of a holiday but it provided me a convenient alibi to escape the clattering din in the Nigerian marketplace. Talks about the fate of Nuhu Ribadu at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) helm, about whether President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua would probe his predecessor formed the plank of discourses when I crammed my personal effects, laptop and all and jetted to Amsterdam en route to the Hague . The New Media fraternity is a gathering of online journalists and marketers from around the world. It is a rare confederation of journalists who deploy the Internet as platform to reach wide audiences across the globe in the most unobtrusive manner.
For sure, I was apprehensive knowing that questions would be asked of me about my country, the issue of corruption (both fiscal and electoral), the state of democracy in Nigeria and other issues that may catch the fancy of the hundreds of journalists at the event.
My anxiety was further jabbed when participants at the event broke into small groups during the strategy sessions. And trust journalists especially those savvy in digital matters, they came armed with new media gadgets from pint-size but very powerful cameras to notebooks and laptops endowed with the speed of light. I pulled out my Nigerian-branded laptop. It was a high-speed Zinox Duo Core - cute, smart and elegant. And pronto, it engaged the attention of my colleagues especially those from Europe and Asia . They expressed surprise that a computer of such sophistication could come out of Nigeria . I was amazed at their amazement. I countered that Nigeria is the birthplace of globally acclaimed techies and scientists. I cited Philip Emeagwali acclaimed as the Father of the Internet for his peerless parallel computing power. I pointed to Professor Barth Nnaji, one of the topmost roboticians in the world. I posited that there are many Nigerians in the laboratories of Microsoft, IBM and other Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). I told them that Zinox, though a foremost brand, was not the only Nigerian-branded computer. The more I reeled out my explanation, the more their eyes popped out with plenary incredulity. I gushed that my Nigerian laptop could out-perform many of the established brands in the global market. Still, there was a halo of doubt in their visage, something verging on both suspicion and doubt.
You’ll excuse them for almost disbelieving my story. Hitherto, their minds had been suffused with sour and sordid stories about Nigeria as the hotbed of all scams especially advance fee fraud and as a place where oil money stalks the streets ready and willing to be grabbed by anyone that wishes. To them the Nigerian environment was antithetical to enterprise and entrepreneurship particularly the type that requires clinical cerebral sagacity. They could imagine Nigerians in Nigeria excelling in sports and other endeavour that requires more of brawn than brain but certainly not in the highly analytical geekdom of computers. My audacity could not douse their disbelief. As if to puncture my now swollen ego, Stein Hademann, a German prose stylist dragged my laptop to himself. Quickly, he ran a check on the application software embedded in it. He checked the Internet speed, it was fast and rocketing. He turned to the control panel and jiggled at a few icons as though trying to find a technical deficiency. I watched his face as it flashed from a smile to plain demure and back to a smile. I was numb but unfazed by his unsolicited scrutiny of a proudly Nigerian computer brand. At the end, he pushed it back to me with a veneer that suggested satisfaction. “It’s top grade”, he said, and apologised for his raffishness. Almost immediately, it was the turn of Lee Wung, the zesty mixed blood (half Korea and half Taiwan ). He literally put me on the dock. Assured that the Nigerian branded laptop was of a superior quality ranking among the very best in the world, he prodded me with a spasm of questions. He wanted to know if the builders of the laptops were actually Nigerians or Asians working in Nigerian factories. He sought to know the level of computer penetration in my country, the market capacity and potentials. I obliged him with answers. He goaded me for more explanations in a manner that bordered more on mischief than plain inquisition.
Again, he could not be blamed. Several years of poor leadership had placed on Nigeria the dreadful poster of underdevelopment, backwardness and primitiveness. It is difficult for any foreigner to imagine that out of Nigeria could sprout any touchstone of modernity especially in the ICT sector. This is more so because outside the United States , the birthplace of personal computer, Asia is at the moment the largest consumer of computers and allied products. According to global market-research group, IDC, global computer sales had been on the rise with Asian countries doing better than American market. By fourth quarter of last year, global computer shipments had hit 40.15 million units which is 19.6 percent higher than sales within the same period the previous year. The research attributes the growth to a booming and bullish Asian market. And that’s what really got me angry. Asians are leveraging on the opportunities of ICT but Africans are far behind in the digital race. From India to Singapore , a new platoon of ICT-powered billionaires are popping up but in Nigeria it is not so. The billionaires are crooks in government houses who accessed public funds and shoveled them into their private accounts. The real entrepreneurs who strive to create wealth particularly those in the knowledge economy are left dry in the mud. But thanks to my Zinox laptop, I did not lose face in a global assembly of knowledgeable journalists. I had a digital product, a very good one at that, to advertise my country. If anything, it helped to douse their perception of Nigeria as a nation of scammers and political scoundrels. Now they know that Nigeria is not all about petro-dollar sleaze and skirmishes in the Niger Delta, it is about enterprise, hard work and industry best practices. They know that Nigeria is ready and primed to play in the global market.
Officials of Zinox Technologies may not know this, but there is a tenor of patriotic redemption in their effort to produce a Nigerian-branded computer that competes favourably with only the very best in the world. It was for them I left the Hague feeling proudly Nigerian. And in a globalised economy especially with the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between ECOWAS nations and the European Union, Nigeria would have something to showcase on the negotiation table. This perhaps is why the Yar’Adua government should consider a regime of incentives for those companies that have weathered the storm in local production of goods, not least would be those in the ICT sector.
•Umukorowrote from Lagos
advertisement
advertisement
