The Nigerian Issue: OLPC and the Ex-Convict

Professor Negroponte's initiative of bringing IT into the undeveloped countries has partially failed in Nigeria. We have talked about corporate giants launching poisoned darts at Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project and how they perceive a humanitarian action. Apart from Microsoft and Intel's defending their own interests, OLPC has recently been the subject of yet another scandal to prevent OLPC from entering the Nigerian market.

The alleged patent infringement lawsuit in Nigeria has been filed by the Nigerian corporation Lagos Analysis. The lawsuit claims that the foundation has willingly abused a registered keyboard technique for multilingual accent and diacritics input. The lawsuit is without merit, foundation lawyers claim, as the above-mentioned technique has been developed back in 1996. It took several years for the Nigerian corporation to fill the current patent.

The scandal has unveiled some other hidden aspects of LAGOS: Ade Oyegbola, head and founder of LAGOS Analysis is a bank fraud ex-convict who has served a year in the Boston detention facilities back in 1990. Oyegbola is currently threatening the OLPC program and insists that the company's patent is legitimate. Moreover, he promises to bring the patent infringement case in front of an American court.

It seems that, as the OLPC program runs successfully, more and more entities are disturbed by a cheap and viable alternative to mobile PCs. Roger Kay, one of the most vehement opponents of the OLPC program has recently shown his admiration: "I remain generally skeptical, but that's some good news", he said. "If you were a budding computer company, you'd be happy to sell 300,000 or so units in your first season." Kay also drew attention to the problems soon to follow if the company sticks to charity rather than a computer business. "They have to survive on selling products, having satisfied customers, and having people come back for more", continued Kay.