Microsoft gives company US$400,000 "marketing expenses" to put Windows on Nigerian government computers!
November 12, 2007 by muyiwa
According to this story, a Linux company, Mandriva, had sold computers with a customisable, open source operating system to the Nigerian government at a very low price. According to the head of Mandriva, the reason the Nigerian government chose their solution was because it could be customised to suit the customer's needs. The machines were tested, the government signed for a consignment of 17,000 computers, and the company started delivering. Suddenly, TSC, the company handling the contract on behalf of the government said to Mandriva, "we will pay you for your software, but after you supply the computers with it installed, we will delete it and install Microsoft Windows".
Now, Windows is not customisable, and there are several undocumented little programs that can send information back to Microsoft if you don't take steps to stop them. Fortunately, someone at the government funding agency in Nigeria, Nigeria's Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), seems to have their head screwed on right, saw through the scam that the arrangement is, and stepped in to shut it down. Did I hear you say "Hooray!"? Well, it's not quite as simple as that.
It turns out that "Microsoft is still negotiating an agreement that would give TSC US$400,000 (£190,323) for marketing activities around the Classmate PCs when those computers are converted to Windows" according to Microsoft's Nigeria Country Manager, Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu (see here). Mandriva's François Bancilhon, in a sarcasm-laden letter to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, says the deal got "more competitive". Others might say it got dirty. Others may even say that Microsoft is bribing TSC. Or what would you call a situation where someone is paid to replace a perfectly good operating system with a bloated, buggy, and insecure one?
The Nigerian government, or its anti-corruption agency, the EFCC, must investigate who has been offered and obviously agreed to take money in exchange for compromising not only the security of Nigeria's IT infrastructure, but perhaps more importantly, potentially lock in the next generation of Nigerians into an operating system that other countries are rejecting in their national IT infrastructure. Anybody found guilty should be charged with nothing less than treason.
