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Nigerian Government Nixes Microsoft's Mandriva Block

Posted by Zonk on from the money-well-spent dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After trying to bribe a local supplier with a $400,000 marketing contract, Microsoft has still apparently lost out in trying to woo Nigeria's government to use Windows over Linux. Microsoft threw the money at the supplier after it chose Mandriva Linux for 17,000 laptops for school children across Nigeria. The supplier took the bait and agreed to wipe Mandriva off the machines, but now Nigeria's government has stepped in to stop the dirty deal."

13 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Wow, just wow! by Bryansix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft really did try to Bribe them. That's crazy. I hope this makes the mainstream media.

    1. Re:Wow, just wow! by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The thing is, in poor countries like Nigeria (especially in Nigeria), bribes are essentially standard. It's hard to get anything done in some countries (Nigeria included) without at least small bribes. What generally makes news is when the bribes are discovered by the western press. That doesn't change the fact that almost every business that works there is going to get dragged into that bribery system in one way or another if they wish to operate.

      The really big surprise isn't the bribes. It's that the Nigerian government intervened to *stop* the bribes. Now, that could just mean that they didn't get their cut, but...

      --
      I have the memory of an elephant. I remember going to the zoo and seeing an elephant.
    2. Re:Wow, just wow! by darkonc · · Score: 4, Interesting
      If it's a lunch for you and your entire family,
      on the French Riviera,
      at a 5 star hotel, and
      you 'had to wait' 2 weeks for your dinner host to show up, and
      they hinted at 'looking forward to' another such 'friendly dinner' if ... 'certain things happen',

      then -- yeah. I think I would. Granted you have a bit more freedom in terms of what you do with $400K in cash, but some people would fall for the, uhnm, "dinner" too.

      It really is all thinly veiled bribery -- it's just that you want to generate a certain plausible deniability should 'someone with an axe to grind' (e.g. the fraud squad) should come looking for evidence of illegal actoin.

      You see, it's one thing to have a mysterious $300K deposit to your savings account just before you took an unusual action. It's something else to prove that 'a 1-hour dinner meeting' (after that 'impolite' 1 week wait on the Riviera) was bribery connected to that same unusual action. .. Similarly with that $400K 'marketing deal' that was 'entered into on it's own merits' (and only cost you $100K to fulfill on).

      Yeah, the smoke and mirrors costs something, but it's alot cheaper than being involved in an messy bribery trial.

      --
      Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
  2. Still illegal by trolltalk.com · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ever since the Lockheed bribery scandal, its been illegal for US citizens or corporations to bribe anyone, anywhere in the world, same as its illegal for them to engage in pedophilia abroad.

    So, how much $$$ (campaign contributions - the only "legal" bribe) Microsoft is going to spend to "make this go away"?

    --
    Kevin Smith on Prince
  3. It's just tipping by Harmonious+Botch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously, you have a very good point. That is the way business is done in some third world countries. They don't consider it wrong. Anyone with power expects to be paid, much like waitresses expect to be tipped here.
    Microsoft apparently failed to pay all of the right people.

    1. Re:It's just tipping by xcomputer_man · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, I don't think so. Nigeria has had a reputation for a long time for being one of the most corrupt countries in the world, but ever since the new president Umaru Yar'Adua was elected earlier this year, he has been on a major crusade to eliminate corruption and enforce the rule of law. So I'm not surprised that this happened -- it's only one in what is becoming a long list of surprising moves by the Nigerian government lately. He was the first president ever to declare his personal assets. Just yesterday we heard that he revoked several arbitrary allocations of prime real estate in the most upscale suburb of Abuja (the capital city) that were given by the previous administration to top government officials. One of the plots of land was allocated to Yar'Adua himself. I lived in Nigeria for 17 years, and I have never heard of a president revoking his own land allocation.

      I'd say Microsoft *did* try to bribe someone thinking it was business as usual in Nigeria, and the federal government heard about it and said "Uh, no. You can take your $400,000 and shove it."

      --
      Am I a hipster-doofus?
  4. Update 2: Windows Afterall by Dak+RIT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "'We are sticking with that platform,' said the official, who would not give his name.

    The organisation reserves the right to choose whichever platform is best for Nigerian students, which could also include Microsoft's software in the future, said the official."

    Does anyone else get the impression that's code for: "$400,000 would go a long way in convincing me that Microsoft's software is best for Nigerian students."? Sounds like Microsoft just forgot to include Nigerian officials in on the deal.

  5. I grew up in the "third world" by cesman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I for one am very happy to see this stopped! I grew up in a "third world" county (Belize), when my siblings and I joined our parents in the US, I recall one of the first things they did was get us a computer (CoCo 2). I wouldn't be where I am today if they had not (good job and my own little project http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html/ ). While I did do some growing up on Windows, it has been almost 9 years since I switched to using Linux exclusively at home. As someone that grew up in a developing nation, I firmly believe there is no better option for it that FLOSS.

    Education and technology can level the playing field. Perhaps in the first world, we can afford to argue about the merits of FLOSS vs closed source. However, this isn't the case when you are worried about where your next meal is coming from or if you can afford to vaccinate your child. The Gates Foundation could really show it's altruism by helping to support OLPC or the Classmate PC.

    Cecil

    --
    When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
  6. Who to blame? by dafradu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Big corporations bribing government officials, i've seen this a million times, i'm brazilian... Just recently it was Cisco in Brazil http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/2334253 and now MS in Nigeria. I've only seen people been arrested or fired, couldn't the corporation be fined or something? Apart from theirs reputation, the corporation itself in the end is clean to continue doing its dirty business...

  7. Re:A new low...amazing by AdamWill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "One wonders if Mandriva bribed the gov't in Nigeria first.."

    Heh. Even if you didn't believe we wouldn't be inclined to do that, we don't have the *capacity*. Microsoft can get $400,000 out of Bill's petty cash jar. We couldn't get $400,000 from anywhere.

    If this really came down to a battle to see who could provide the biggest...er...factory-to-dealer incentive, we'd be dead in the water.

    (I work for Mandriva, in case you didn't figure that one out yet).

  8. Complaint filed with Washington State AG by tvlinux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Friday morning at 10:00 pdt, I filed a complaint with the Washington State AG.

    ***
    Microsoft is bribing "Technology Support Center (TSC)" a Nigerian computer company with $400,000.00 to install Windows after TSC already bought an operating system. To get around the word "bribe" they are calling it "marketing activities".
    ***

  9. Re:A new low...amazing by AdamWill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, we raised $1.6m for the Linbox acquisition. It was spent on the Linbox acquisition. We also raised a couple of million in venture capital. That *is* our capital for the foreseeable future. All of it.

    People sometimes really don't appreciate the difference in scale between a company like Microsoft and one like Mandriva. Microsoft makes $28m *profit* in a day. For Mandriva, $2m of *capital* is a huge investment.

  10. This one they caught. And the countless others? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bah. Late to the party, as usual, hope more than 3 people read this. Let me share a story... it's been over 5 years already, so I hope I don't get into trouble for sharing it.

    Picture a budding "third world" country, but one a little closer to the south of the border: Guatemala. Also picture a huge, monolithic Gov't institution, the Ministry of Education, where a small, dedicated team has been assigned a major project: switching all of the Ministry's PCs to Linux. This meant not only the PCs in the administrative buildings, but also the computers in every school in the country. Which in reality wasn't that huge of a project, because it's a smallish country, and at the time few schools had PCs for the kids.

    Still, it was a very exciting project! We sincereley felt that what we were beginning could have a very positive impact in the lives of Guatemalan kids, exposing them early on to the advantages (and difficulties, too!) of the gospel of Open Source. But we soon ran into trouble. The hardware was hopelessly outdated -- note we didn't have the advantage of Xubuntu and other nice modern end-user distros for legacy HW, plus we met with serious and organized resistance from the many Ministry bureaucrats who decided they weren't going to give up the Microsoft OS they barely knew how to operate.

    We soldiered on nonetheless, for a couple more weeks at least. But we could tell a storm was brewing at the higher ranks. Sure enough, the project gets axed, and a head or two rolls. Technical reasons were claimed, but we techs knew very well that the technical hurdles could've been overcome. Rumors abounded, and we all had our own suspicions. My own suspicions were confirmed when I had the chance to talk to a senior management guy who had managed to keep his job, who told me in no uncertain terms that Microsoft was very directly responsible for the project's cancellation, by courting Gov't officials and offering a generous "discount" on the many licenses the Ministry needed to fully comply with the law -- most of the Ministry's Windows PCs were illegal installations in the first place. And also, that palms had indeed been greased -- no proof, of course, but knowing how most (yes, most!) Gov't deals go down here would have been enough for me to believe this, but the confirmation by that bureaucrat left me with no doubt.

    Cut to 5 years later. Millions were poured into the "legalization" of thousands of the Ministry's PCs, but the benefits for the average schoolkid remain to be seen. I often wonder what this country's schools would look like today if greed hadn't gotten in the way.. but sadly that's a recurring theme in corrupt countries. MS has a lot to answer for, in my humble opinion.

    anon because this is still a very dangerous country