.........Inaugurates
‘Clean Dealers’
 |
| *Emma Onyeje, Microsoft Nigeria GM |
By ROMMY IMAH
Microsoft Nigeria
has once more reiterated its desire to flush out pirated software from the
Nigerian market following the recognition of some of its trade partners as
Clean Dealers.
With this
development, prospective Microsoft software buyers are guaranteed original
Microsoft software products from any of the certified clean dealers.
In 2010, the Business
Software Alliance (BSA), an international association representing the global
software industry, in conjunction with the market research firm IDC, revealed
that software piracy rate in Nigeria was 83% and that the Nigerian economy lost
over US$156 million to software piracy in 2009 alone.
In fact, the IDC
estimated then that the commercial value of software lost between 2005 and 2009
was approximately US$584 million. Counterfeit
software is often sold at a much cheaper price, but can end up costing users
hundreds or thousands of dollars.
But at a press
conference held recently at its corporate office in Lagos, Microsoft Nigeria
general manager, Mr. Emmanuel Onyeje said the company has been unrelenting in
its fight against piracy adding that the inauguration of the Clean Dealer
programme was in continuation of this fight.
The Microsoft
Clean Dealer initiative allows partners and retailers of Microsoft products to enter
into an agreement to sell, as well as promote the sales of only genuine
Microsoft products. Such dealers are prohibited by the agreement from selling
pirated and counterfeit Microsoft products.
Onyeje observed that
though efforts by the software giant in the past to fight piracy may not have
yielded the required result, he expressed hope that the new initiative would go
a long way to curbing if not completely wiping out piracy in the country’s
software space.
According to
him, “Microsoft’s tactics have remained the creation of accessibility,
affordability, awareness, and now a direct partnership with the partners
themselves. These initiatives are hinged on educating both the end users as
well as the Microsoft partners on the value of buying and using genuine Products.”
He said that
Microsoft has been in the fore-front in the war against fake and pirated
software products adding that this is evident in its joint activities with
agencies like the Nigerian Copyrights Commission, NCC and the authorities of
the Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos, the Computers and Allied Products Dealers
Association of Nigeria, CAPDAN.
Onyeje expressed
Microsoft’s willingness to partner with all relevant government agencies in the
fight against counterfeit software products in the country.
Anti-Piracy
manager for Microsoft Nigeria, Mrs Ugochi Agoreyo noted that the initiative is
a new phase in the fight against software piracy in the country lamenting that
the issue of piracy and intellectual property theft pose as great danger to the
businesses of honest dealers of genuine software products across the country.
“The clean dealer campaign is the dynamics of who is willing
to do the right thing for the right measures, because the campaign between
Microsoft and its partners will not only promote the sales of Microsoft genuine
products, but will also put the recognised partners on the limelight as the
registered dealers of Microsoft,” she said.
The campaign she said would create a platform for
Microsoft to engage its partners on a three quarterly basis, in order to
promote and ensure the continued sales of genuine products adding that the
licence will run for a period of one year, after which the team from Microsoft
will re-validate the partnership, once the partner is not found wanting.
“Microsoft will support the partners and retailers of its
genuine products as the primary source of obtaining or buying the products by
updating their names on its websites,” she added.
Certificates of authenticity showing that genuine products
are sold in a particular shop were also handed over to 32 clean dealers who had
signed in for the partnership.
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