Information Technology is gradually gaining momentum in Nigeria. As new day passes by, new people are venturing into Systems Development; Hardware and Software. Majority of these engineers or computer scientists benefited so much from the open source community. If by not partially using an open source code in their projects they completely deploy it to their novice clients and collecting a handsome fee for it.

We search blogs every day, pull down codes and read through discussion forums but very few of us contribute in such forums, talk less create a blog/write ups where people can share part of the solutions they created or discovered. I have visited many blogs that have greatly saved my life and time. I know I am guilty of not donating few dollars to some interesting blogs, most of them only accept Paypal which is not available in Nigeria.

Open source Projects

According to Wikipedia, In production and development, open source as a philosophy promotes a universal access via free license to a product's design or blueprint, and b) universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone. Open source are projects that their sources are freely available under some particular licences. It is like a giveaway from the owner of such projects. Open source has helped greatly to teach and improved the way developers do things. It reduces development time and cost. Though not all businesses believe in projects released into open source; with a different philosophy and belief, we know most of them are now also looking that way because there is a new wave in development arena and how things are perceived.

Most projects never started as open source. Most are derivatives of personal projects, personal enthusiasm, research or products used for many years by companies.

Open Source in Nigeria

I stand to be corrected but I have not seen a useful open source project from Nigeria. I have been into development for many years and I am yet to see an open source project that evolved from Nigeria. Thanks to some meaningful Nigerian developers that have participated in open source projects and started a blog to showcase what they have learnt so far from experience (we know you all). You are the real Boss because you showed that despite all odds we face as a citizen of this country, we still have the passion in us to give back to the community. Below are some of the reasons why Open source have not worked in Nigeria.

Commercial driven economy

We are in an economy that is commercially driven. Every Developer/Engineer has gone into this race because he wants to make billions like Bill Gates. They see whatever they’ve solved as an opportunity to make some more money. Even if it is what someone else has done that he just rebranded with his name. I understand you want to enjoy your monopoly before the solution finds its way to the community but let that happen because you got the base knowledge if not all from this same community.

Poor Electrical Power Supply

In a country where the government had been promising us power since our independence. We give birth to our children to say “Up NEPA” as their first word. Most company run on Generator 24/7, how can I possibly decide to run an open source project?

I remember when I first left youth service (a compulsory one year national service after graduation from the University). I had so much courage to run a start-up with all my sparkling ideas. I used my home as office because I didn’t have enough funds to rent an office space. I couldn’t sustain the so called company because I was the only staff of myself for two months owing to the deficiency in electric power supply. I realised I didn’t need a counsellor when I started begging from family and friends to eat. I couldn’t ordinarily shave my beards, not going as far as sending my parents anything. Then anyone who came across me would advise me to pick up a job. Can you see a reason why I needed money more than anyone else and why any penny paid for my product would go a long way than reading “Thank you sir” comments on the projects that I made open?

Substandard application developers and Engineer

There are so much half baked developers in Nigeria. They are not concerned about the processes, standards, usability and resource utilisation of their applications. There are so many application developers I have met that their code structure is nothing to write home about. I know we keep improving day by day on this but it is not acceptable to remain where you are and feel you are still trendy. I have met some developers that you would introduce to some good frameworks that would make their lives better and would reduce their development time but would say “I love coding from the scratch”, “It makes me lazy”, “I don’t believe in any of it, there might be a back door in it”. I am sure you can laugh out loud like me if you hear such. A good reflection of this can be seen in the website of Nigerian examination bodies where you get funny errors like “Bandwidth exceed” or users would be able to use the applications because of unprecedented traffic. I wonder if proper test and estimations are done for such application, if proper tools are used and if the design pattern is optimised for such use. Many developers don’t understand how another kilobyte would affect that project they are working on. So these set of people are afraid to make their projects public because they are afraid of castigation or negative comments.

Some applications that are developed in this country this year still have the look and feel of years when web is still primitive.

Hostile Environment and Greed

Nigerian environment does not encourage what you call your open source because you may not get one contributor from it. It is not as if it wasn’t useful for them but they prefer to use the 5 minutes they would use in logging in and commenting or pushing back the little modification they have done on your project to chase their potential clients or use it for solving some family issues. Our situation have made us “LION”, we don’t code for fun but money. ‘Have it all’ spirit has eaten deep into everyone and it is hard to ever do anything for free. If God was a Nigerian, air might possibly be a luxury.

Corruption and Unfavourable Government policies

This reminds me of when I was still serving as Youth Corper; when we were to compete for the Central Bank funding of the first ten viable business plan. I put in all my very best by consulting graduates in different fields to help out in the different categories of the business plan. I was proposing to develop a unique type of software for Students. I waited patiently and when the result came out, my business plan was at position 14. I carefully glanced through the winning plans and was surprised to see fish farming as the first, poultry as the second and something agriculture as the third, till the 13^th. I wonder why they did not inform all the participants that they were only accepting proposals from Farmers. I later got the gist that some of the winners lobbied to be picked. Some paid in cash and others in kind. You would even be shocked to hear that there is always a winner from Corpers posted to Central bank every year. It is either they have bribed their way there or they already know the panel. I am never blaming anybody for not making the first ten, anything could have caused it but our leaders are not interested in what is intangible. If they cannot touch it, it is not a product.

Our Government does not know IT and if they ever have such need, they prefer to get it done by foreign companies so they have the pride, “It was developed in India or UK”. Other countries enjoy revenue from Information Technology. It is a major part of their economy. They did not just start in a day. These are people who empowered their country to do such.

Anyway, let me not blame anyone because the people who can do the job do not have the muscle to pay their way to get the job and a lot of these developers still do development in the Nigerian way.

Conclusion

We still have a long way to go about making products open to the community because we are not even stabilised enough to cater for our own need. There is no way you can convince a hungry man to let out his source of income to some set of people called community in the name of being Open source. We have all forgotten that there is no way you can get without giving. Givers don’t lack. Let us take away greed and see the future. Start a project today and someday Make it Open.

Movement!