Okey Ndibe
One of the biggest revelations of my recent brief visit to Nigeria
was to discover the shabby, deteriorating state of mobile telephony in
Nigeria. In a word, service providers are serving Nigerian mobile phone
users a raw deal. And the hapless phone owners can’t count on any
government agency or official to look out for them.
The mobile telephone crisis is across the board – and it’s become
nothing short of a scandal. Nigeria has three major mobile telephone
networks – MTN, Glo and Airtel. I don’t believe any of them boasts
satisfactory service delivery. Many Nigerians maintain three or more
phones, one from each of the major providers. Yet, the problem persists.
In fact, my friends, relatives and acquaintances who use one of the
three providers or another voiced the same complaints. They said
circuits are so often jammed that they are unable to reach the person
they need to speak to. When contact is made, the calls are plagued by
frequent, irritating disconnections. Often, one or both parties are
unable to hear the conversation.
I didn’t just get an earful about these problems, I also experienced
them. On one occasion, I was at the domestic airport in Lagos waiting
to board a flight for Calabar. I desperately needed to speak to a cousin
of mine who was supposed to meet me before my departure. We had spoken
earlier that day. Yet, when I made more than ten attempts to reach him
from the airport, I kept getting the message that his number did not
exist! Later, he informed me that he had similarly tried to reach my
number, but got nowhere.
The day of my departure back to the US, I rang the number of a
friend. He and I were within the vicinity of the airport, but my calls
didn’t go through. This time, I repeatedly got the message that his
phone was not available. Yet, when we finally ran into each other, he
confirmed that his phone was always on. And that he wasn’t on a
different call, either.
In between these two experiences, I made or received numerous calls
where I could not hear the person on the other line – or the person
couldn’t hear me. A few times, the phone made a whirring sound that
impeded hearing by both caller and called.
And here’s what rubs high doses of salt on the injury of “dropped”
or inaudible calls: the telephone companies still make you pay for it.
That’s right. Each time I made an uncompleted call, I immediately got
text information on how much I was charged. It was a case of heads you
lose, tails you lose. If the phone providers can’t do their jobs, they
still make their customer pay! Perhaps, this factor is a major reason
the three main operators cart away ever burgeoning levels of profit.
It’s one of those painful paradoxes that make you want to shout: Only in Nigeria!
The main reason people invest in telephones is for ease of
communication. And the kind of instantaneous communication afforded by
mobile phones has become an integral part of any modern society.
Businesses depend on mobile phones to negotiate all kinds of deals.
Individuals use them to transmit all manner of information, from the
critical to the ordinary. If a child takes ill in school, a teacher
would want to get through to the kid’s parents immediately. If there’s a
serious accident, witnesses would need to alert the police or a
hospital. If a spouse’s flight is delayed, she or he would be anxious to
convey that information to the other spouse. Sometimes, there’s just
that itch to reach a friend or a relative: to relish the joy of hearing
their voice, knowing they are doing well.
Don’t Nigerian telephone users deserve the same kind of efficiency
that their counterparts elsewhere take for granted? It’s bad enough that
Nigeria became a late entrant and bloomer in the mobile telephone
sector, trailing such neighboring countries as Ghana and Cameroon. Why
should such a relatively young industry develop geriatric symptoms so
early in its life? What accounts for the shambolic service being offered
Nigerian users?
One constant explanation offered by “learned” customers was that the
number of cell phone subscribers in Nigeria had far outstripped the
infrastructure installed by the operators. My follow-up was then: Why
has the government failed to compel these companies to plow some of
their stupendous earnings into infrastructural development? Again, those
who “know” conjectured that the companies were in no haste to invest in
infrastructure. And I heard that too many Nigerian government officials
were too compromised to force the issue.
I remarked to one friend – a lawyer – that, if members of the
National Assembly took their overseeing tasks seriously, they would long
have held hearings to, one, figure out the roots of the woes in the
mobile telecom sector and, two, passed legislation to better protect
Nigerian consumers from the shenanigans of any inefficient,
profit-guzzling providers. Amused, this friend suggested that many of
the legislators and other government officials who are supposed to
regulate the telecom sector enjoy gifts of free phones with unlimited
calls from some of the companies. “How do you legislate on or regulate
an entity that owns you?” he deadpanned.
The brazenness of his claim – and the possibility that his
conjecture was founded – left me stunned. Is it true, indeed, that many
Nigerian law makers, including the highest ranking, receive corrupting
telephonic gifts from mobile phone operators? If that’s the case, then
why is nobody – neither government officials nor groups of concerned
citizens – demanding the prosecution of those who offer such illicit
benefits as well as the unscrupulous officials who accept them? Why is
nobody demanding that ethical standards be established to cover business
transactions, and specifically the relation between businesses and
their official regulators? Why does the government look the other way as
Nigerian consumers are forced to accept substandard service – and
perhaps blatantly exploited?
One is hardly surprised that the government has been indifferent to
the frustrations of Nigerian phone users. In fact, indifference is the
most benign way Nigerian governments respond to the discomforts or
plights of Nigerians. Perhaps, then, it’s up to consumers to remedy
their situation. How about a group of mobile phone users going to court
to demand a finding that they should not be made to pay for calls and
other services that are not provided? Enlightened citizens might as well
take up the fight, since the government shows no inclination to rise to
the occasion.
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