The association said the levy is a set back against the development of home grown technology.

Vice President of CAPDAN, Mac Eze, said: "Government is to be blamed for the dominance of foreign branded computer products in the market because as it is now, there is no protection and encouragement for indigenous system builders that would have added value to the economy."

He said government, through its policy, favours foreign companies that have been taking advantage of Nigerians market "and have virtually turned our country to dumping ground."

"Our indigenous experts that assemble computer products here that are popularly referred to clone are no more in the field because of this unnecessary tariff that is doing us no good".

Corroborating the CAPDANs boss position, the Public Relations Officer of the association, Godwin Enamoh, said: "This development started during the tenure of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, who came up with the idea of encouraging local contents in computer market with imposition of five per cent import duties on imported computer products so as to protect the local system builders.

"The same regime overturned the policy and before we knew it, it is the local companies that are now paying the charges and not those who import computer products again. President Musa YarAduas regime is continuing with the policy and nothing is changing. That is why Hp products have taking over the computer market."

He regretted that most of the foreign computer companies are not interested in equipping Nigerian computer experts through exchange programmes or transfer of knowledge.

"These computer companies dont have a single technology centre in Nigeria. What they have is a mere service centre. Unfortunately, some of the home companies are quiet over it because they are benefiting from the rots in the system.

"Talk about, Hp, Dell, Eser, Lenovo/IBM and many other leading computer companies, the prominence they have gained in Nigeria cannot be compared to other parts of the world. We have the largest computer market in Africa and yet they are not investing back into our economy. We are just their promoters," said Enamoh.

The CAPDAN Vice President cautioned that the nonchalant attitude of government towards encouraging the evolution of home grown technology may make Nigerians remain perpetual patronisers of foreign technologies for a long time to come.

"There is hardly any computer shop you go that majority of what you find there are not Chinese, Japanese or American products, when are we going to start marketing Nigerians products abroad?" he asked.