Mr. PIUS OKIGBO, Jnr. is the President of the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON). In this interview, Okigbo, founder and Chief Executive Officer of InfoSoft, a leading software company in the country advocates the need for continuous engagements and dialogues among stakeholders to encourage locally-developed software solutions and change the misguided mindset among organisations that Nigerian software solutions are inferior to foreign packages. Excerpts:
Local content in the software still remains a burning issue in the nation’s software sector. How are you addressing this issue as ISPON?
Well, there are burning issues concerning ISPON and we say, let us try, as much as possible, to bring together some key policy decision makers or people, who we feel can help to influence policy decisions. We bring them in and we speak to our members regarding that issue. One forum that we use to address some of these issues is the annual ISPON President Dinner and this year’s edition recently held late last month. For us, like in last year’s and as it was this year, ISPON President Dinner centred around local content. I am sure you are already familiar with my passion for local content. I am a very strong believer in and advocate of local content and the reason is very simple: If you want me to hire, then, there must be one way within our mindset to allow me hire the right quality of people, who have gone to school, worked very hard, come up with good grades and that I don’t have to re-educate them to deliver solutions to my clients. But if I have to be condemned by a mindset that anything Nigerians do is inferior, then that means I will never have an opportunity to hire, create, use that talent to develop a solution and deliver to the clients, especially the customers here in Nigeria; I am not talking of abroad yet. That is problem number one.
Meanwhile, we are in a scenario now where we cannot even afford to pay for services abroad anymore, not as we used to do in the past. So, what we have to do is to find a way to use the best of our resources here in Nigeria to develop solutions for us here in Nigeria. Everything we do here now is for us here, not for the white man to come and do it for us. What do I mean by that? There are so many opportunities in government, financial services and oil and gas and just about any sector where software services can be of immense benefits and for the development of our own nation. My own position is that, as much as possible, we should use our local resources but there are challenges on all sides.
There are challenges on the side of our average Nigerians, who believe that everything Nigerians do is sub-standard. The question is: how do we change that? How do we re-shape the thinking? How do we continue to say ‘let us continue to engage Nigerians to develop solutions for us?’ On our own side, we have to help change the thinking by addressing quality, by addressing integrity-related issues and addressing knowledge-related issues. Nobody is going to be interested in talking to us, as practitioners, if every time we render a solution; something is questionable about the authenticity of what we have done. So, our Dinner this year was used as an avenue to push our concerns and wishes in the direction of local contents but the focus for this year was for the financial services sector. Financial services sector here does not really mean the banking sector. It is everything ranging from government side, private sector, the banks, insurance companies, the Security and Exchange Commission, the Nigerian Stock Exchange and anybody, who has anything to do with Naira and kobo. The largest scope is how can we engage the Nigerian software companies to deliver solutions for these sectors, grow the industry and be productive.
What happens to the software policy earlier developed to drive local content patronage and change negative perception towards locally-developed software?
The policy is still there but it has not been addressed. So, what we need to do now is to wake up the community and when I say the community, I mean the larger ecosystem so that we can begin to address these things. If we can address these things by waking up the community, talking about local contents, all well and good. In a couple of weeks back, there was a session in Abuja where software needs in government was discussed. This was sponsored by the Office of National Content for ICT and that, itself, can help to raise some of the ideas and solutions around what can be delivered for the MDAs, for instance. Local content, as far as I am concerned, is a very strong avenue to make significant change in the direction of employment, in the direction of wealth creation and in the direction of knowledge as well. For us, we will continue to sing and shout local content.
What has been the level of collaborations between ISPON and stakeholders to encourage development of locally-relevant solutions for Nigeria?
Well, you don’t need to go far. We are collaborating and an example of local software that is tailored towards solving Nigerian peculiar problem is Remita platform developed by SystemSpecs, which is being used to drive the Treasury Single Account (TSA) of the current government. Or, isn’t Remita locally relevant? Indeed, Remita is very relevant. Unfortunately, there has been resistance from the lawmakers, as they seem to be bent on frustrating this noble effort. It is pure ignorance. It is utter ignorance when you have a bunch of lawmakers, who cannot understand the role a software company is playing in delivering a local solution. The use of foreign solutions coming from places such as Indian and others should not happen. If you don’t encourage company like SystemSpecs and other indigenous IT companies out there, what then are you saying? Why should we be calling in Indian companies? If this ugly trend is not discouraged, the time will come when Indian companies would dominate our markets, repatriate their proceeds abroad and local software companies that should be encouraged and protected would be out of business. We have classic problem where the National Assembly is trying to use laws that are not clearly define to make it seem as if SystemSpecs has done something fraudulent and that is very unfortunate. It is as if to say how can a company – a local company for that matter – make that kind of money? The Remita software solution has been there working and providing services to organisations and even government. It is just that now, everybody has to remit money through Remita in line with the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy of the government and the company is making so much money and that is raising all kind of eyebrows. It is pure ignorance and fear. We have Bill Gates and other software guys that are making all the monies all over the world on services. Have they committed any crime? So, Remita didn’t commit any crime. John Obaro, the CEO of SystemSpecs, hasn’t done anything illegal. I think it is a tragedy to have a National Assembly that is so focused on one transaction, an action that can undermine the success of an industry at large and I find it very unfortunate.
Is there anything ISPON is doing to join SystemSpecs to wage the ongoing battle?
Definitely! What we are going to do is to sit down and actually study the exact nature of how the National Assembly arrived at its decision to seek cancellation of the contacts. What we have requested at the level of ISPON is to bring in our lawyers to help us understand, from legal side and interpret exactly, so that we can address the problem in the future. Is it not people that wrote the BVN and all kind of software applications in Nigeria that have been earning them money over time? Why are we so myopic? So, are the lawmakers saying that SystemSpecs should not earn that kind of money? That it doesn’t deserve it and then come up with some draconian laws that it must pay back. There is something very fundamental about that process. We should be encouraging these guys and not trying to stifle this industry. I found it very unfortunate. I really do but these are the things we are talking about. Companies abroad have been milking Nigerians for years in software services and software solutions. Once upon a time, we had companies that would bring in solutions that they claimed that Nigerians didn’t have any expertise in and would be leasing it for $7 million a year. The companies bring in the hardware, the software and seven or 10 people that would be running the system for one year and every year, you pay $7 million. Did the National Assembly ever wake up one morning and say that was illegal? Over 10 years, they would have earned a little over $70 million and services wouldn’t have ended there; additional services would have been tagged on the main services. That is just one of the hundreds of such projects in the past handled by foreign companies. By the time you convert the dollars into Naira, it could be in huge billions of Naira. So, there is a need for dialogue on the need to put a place a strong laws on local software development and patronage in the country.
How do we intend to overcome this kind of misunderstanding in future, especially on the part of the lawmakers?
First of all, there is a desperate need for awareness on the part of the lawmakers. There is a desperate need for that. They need to understand the role a company like SystemSpecs or any other company can play in helping to create wealth and build solutions that can add value to our economy. Now, by creating awareness, I mean, giving them a good understanding of the interplay of how things work in the software space. So, you don’t don’t wake up one day and open your mouth on the floor of the Senate and make a very ridiculous statements. That is necessary, hence, there must be some form of engagement and that engagement can either be through a seminar. Again, the problem about this also that if you invite them to a seminar, the lawmakers will never shows up. In the ISPON Dinner we just held, we had invited the Senate Committee Chairman and House Committee Chairman on ICT. They called us back but they didn’t come eventually. Now, if the lawmakers had attended, they would have listened to the issues and the questions that arose at the event in and around local content. But they would never show up and even if they do, they will just spend about five minutes after which they would get up and leave. So, what are they going to learn? Is it when you now summon me to the House that you ask me to come and defend a memorandum that you will learn about the industry. We must remember that there is a problem with our civil service. It is no longer what it used to be – Think-Tank. They are not that anymore and so, for that reason, we need to engage and it is a continuous process. It doesn’t stop with one session. It is a multiplicity of sessions over time to raise the awareness level based on understanding and to make them see what they do as lawmakers and how those things impact on the industry either negatively and positively on the solutions that we develop at the end of the day. Remember, these solutions can be mobile solutions that would be consumed by people outside Nigeria for which you too might be user of that solution. My own challenge here is: ‘how do we raise the awareness level?’ be you senators and members of the House and make sure they don’t make such a dangerous statement on the floor of the House as in their clamour now for Remita contract cancellation. How do we engage and what level of engagement do we build by coming up with an advocacy group that can help us provide some understanding on some basic things. Their current attitude tells me that if we, as a country, get a programme similar to, say NASA, after one accident, they would have just killed the entire programme. They wouldn’t see the end results and the long-term benefits of having such an organisation in place – the things we can learn from it; the things we can take home at the end of the day and resent as our small contribution to the development of our own environment.
What is the market potential of the Nigerian software industry despite the low per caption of indigenous software packages?
The potential is very high. Currently, there are over 20,000 and 25,000 MDAs from across all the three tiers of government that requires local solution in just about everything. What does that tell you? It means you can have local software companies constantly writing software till kingdom comes to address everything possible in different sectors and that is huge billions of Naira. The challenge we have is that we have not come to this space early enough but even then, we have developed some good solutions that foreign solutions cannot match. Let me take Enterprise Resource Planning Solution (ERP) from SAP, the Oracle, Microsoft solutions and there are a host of others. If you take it purely on accounting system of view, Nigeria has accounting system that has been developed locally and that can deliver, to some degree, what it is you want. But as I have said time and time again, all these big vendors that keep moving around and touting themselves as the biggest players in the software space, they all had their first beginnings and each person’s first beginning was a contract to offer a solution. So, SAP didn’t wake up one day and become this humongous behemoth, neither did Oracle or Microsoft. They all have their humble beginning. So, if you tell me that you cannot appreciate a humble beginning of a Nigerian government by giving them contract and supports to allow it get a little bigger and develop that software by adding more innovative features and functions and for it to begin to expand its reach and market, what then are you now telling me as government? If you wake up one morning and you say ‘Oh!, It is Nigerian solution and as such, the software cannot be good,’ you have already used a negative approach to eliminate indigenous players from a potential to grow because in your mind, nothing black is good; nothing indigenous is good.
So, it is through encouragement, especially from the government that the SAP, Microsoft, Oracle became what they have become today and Nigerian software companies need a similar support from the government and even the private sector players. I still maintain today that there is no any foreign Human Resources (HR) software system that is better than the locally-developed HR package. I stand by that statement and I am prepared to argue it with anybody. Even if I can only meet 85 per cent of your requirement, if you pay me what you are supposed to pay me, I will make a hundred per cent of what you want over time and with the good money you have paid, I will be able to hire and train people that will give me the best result for you as client. Indeed, Nigerian HR software system gives a Nigerian company what we require both for private and public sectors. Tell me why you will go and spend millions of dollars to go and buy a foreign HR software and I am using it at that local level. Meanwhile, you see a local software and you want to pay for it for just N1 million. How can you build a business of N1 million? So, pricing is another problem facing local software companies. They are lowly priced because it is Nigerian solutions and yet, you want me, as a software company, to hire your brother, sister and uncles and pay them well. It is what goes around comes around! How do you expect me to then do that?
So, if we don’t begin to appreciate that you can call a Nigerian software company and give it a N70 million contract and tell me that over three years I should improve the system from, say , its current 80 per cent requirement level to 100 per cent, before you know it, I can become a software house employing 3,000 developers. In Indian, it is common for an organisation to hire 3,000 developers and more. Before all the Indian software companies that we know today started doing jobs outside of Indian, they were all getting contracts locally. There is nothing we cannot write in software programming but nobody is going to trust us to give us that kind of money as to make us a bigger players in Nigeria and this is a big tragedy.
How do we overcome this lack of trust and change in perception?
Dialogue. Dialogue. Dialogue. We have to continue dialoguing. We must continue to engage. We must build the trust. We must build the trust between the producers and the consumers. It is our responsibility as practitioners to ensure we build that trust and this is why, as ISPON, we have to continually engage and if we don’t continue to engage, we fail. People talk of international best-practices for patronising foreign software and I ask them: what is best practice? What is best-practice should be locally-based and should be in line with the technology and lifestyle of people. So, if we talk of international best-practice, we have to be very careful how we define it so as not to continue killing local companies because of that phraseology. If you bring SAP solution, are you going to tell me it has international best practice when it has been developed to suite the process in their clime? Our own processes are different from their own processes. We believe that it is a gradual process and we believe that, through continuous engagements, we would achieve understanding of government to support our software industry to be able to create wealth and move the government agenda of economic development forward. This is because when we encourage local software solutions and not blindly demean them, we would have developed the industry locally and then, we begin to think of how we can sell our software solutions to organisations outside Nigerians and that will help build our local currency and entire economy.