Lagos — THE nation may have lost an estimated over $1 billion to the foreign software market due to unusable software brought into the country in the last few years. This indication was given by the Vice President of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), and Managing Director of Labyet Polaris, Limited, Chief Olaide Ayodele in Lagos. He spoke to newsmen at the end of a one-day meeting of Chief Executive Officers (CEO's) of Information Technology (Industry) Association of Nigeria (ITAN) at its secretariat in Ikeja.

He said that the avalanche of unusable software deployed in the country by both private and public enterprises supersede $1 billion dollars, made up of money used in signing the projects and are later abandoned due to their non-deployable in the nation's system.

He therefore wants the federal government to encourage local software industry by making a directive for about 20 per cent of these products to be deployed in all government establishments and agencies.

The amount, he said, cuts across major sectors of the economy including banking and finance as well as oil, noting that the patronage of local software would also boost the use of locally assembled Personal Computers (PCs) in the country.

"Nigeria has lost more than $1 billion to software that never worked," he decried, adding that extensive use of these software would bring the needed attention and demand for locally assembled PCs.

Chief Ayodele who represents ITAN in the NCS' board, also hailed the federal government and Presidency precisely for timely intervention on the controversies surrounding the nation's local hosting of the Country Code Top Level Domain (CCTLD).

"We (ITAN) gave our support to NCS position on .ng" he said, stressing that the point made by NCS as the umbrella body of industry interest groups was to avoid taking of Nigerians for a ride.

"We're happy the way the matter was resolved so far, based on the personal intervention of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo," he declared, just as he believes the outcome would be to the benefit of all Nigerians.

He look forward to the conclusion of plans to set up the stakeholders by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), saying that the agency must be given ample time to come out with something good for the nation.