It all began more than a decade ago. Today, the telecoms sector has contributed about $35 billion in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the economy, bridged the digital divide and created jobs in the formal and informal sectors. Despite the gains, the revolution has its other sides, writes LUCAS AJANAKU.
SOMETIME in 1983, after completing his ordinary level school certificate examination in June, Mr. Emmanuel Kehinde left Ibadan for Sokoto, Sokoto State. His intention was to stay with a brother, who was then serving in 7 Mechanised Brigade, Nigerian Army. The family had agreed that Emmanuel would stay with his brother long before he finished writing the examination but there was no agreement about the date of arrival at the Caliphate. Four days after writing the last paper, he boarded a night truck and off to Sokoto he went. Despite riding in a Mercedez 911 truck, the journey was smooth.
He arrived at the city garage very early the following morning and from there, he boarded a bus to Ginginya Barracks. When he arrived at the Senior Non-Commissioned Officers (SNCOs) Quarters, he met the doors of the two-bedroom apartment locked. Neither was his brother’s neighbour anywhere near the apartment. The duo had been drafted to carry out ‘special duty’ outside the state.
Like a fish out of water, Emmanuel was left in the lurch; he had to plan his return trip to Ibadan. He sold his audio cassettes and a Sony tape player to raise fare as there was no way he could communicate with his brother. Two communication options were opened to him then: one was telegraph; while the other was land line. The former would not guarantee immediate response; the latter was an exclusive preserve of the rich and families of the military personnel, who were at the heml of affairs. Were there a functional ubiquitous communications system, Emmanuel and his brother would have reached an agreement on when it will be most appropriate for the two to see each other.
But more than three decades after, things have changed so diametrically. Gradual reduction in devices’ prices has driven access and penetration. Today, the mobile phone is no longer seen as a social status symbol but as a means of voice communication, internet access and even business transactions.
Abubakar Ali is an itinerant mendicant and native of Gombi, Adamawa State, one of the towns worst hit by the mindless blood-letting of the radical sect, Boko Haram. A visually-impaired man, who was usually assisted by a young man he simply identified as Sadiq, Ali clutched his mobile phone jealously as he fixed his ear piece. Just a little after the ever-busy Iyana Ipaja Bridge, he sat down and engaged in a passionate conversation with one of his kinsmen in the town which is also the headquarters of Gombi Local Government Area of the state.
Ali, who spoke through an interpreter, said: “I have been talking to my family members. I wanted to know how everybody was doing. I have spoken with Hadiza and Zainab my daughters. I was told Bello and his younger brother, Hakeem, have gone to the farm with the donkey. Because of the problem of these Boko Haram people, mobile phones cannot work in some parts of our community because the base stations have been destroyed.”
For Idrissou, also visually-impaired, who regularly stayed on the stairs of the footbridge at CMS, Lagos Island, life would have been worthless without the mobile phone. A beggar from one of the troubled parts of the north, Baba has his ear piece on always, listening to one radio station or the other when making and receiving calls.
“Since I am blind, I get people to help me load recharge cards. They also assist me to download some Quarnic recitations which I listen to. They also help me to dial the numbers I wish to call. It has been a wonderful experience but government should help those of us living with disadvantage with mobile phones that would cater for our peculiar needs,” he said.
The liberalisation of the telecoms sector by the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was one of the best things to have happened to the country since independence in 1960.
Communications Technology Minister, Dr Omobola said the industry currently contributes 9.58 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and also aiding the econmic growths of other parts of the country.
e-business platforms such as Wakanow, Jumia, Paga, Konga, i-Sec, and iRoko TV, to name a few, have come up and are doing so great, contributing to the growth of commerce, job creation. Users of these platforms ride on the crest of the availability of smartphones which are cheap and internet-enabled. Thus, all that is needed for them to stay within the comforts of their living rooms, with mobile broadband provided by the four Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) service providers-MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat and the only surviving but struggling player in the near-moribund Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) sub-sector, Visafone.
Dr Johnson said: “The Nigerian Telecoms sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world and continues to attract significant (Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). An additional $6 billion was added between 2011 and last year alone. Total mobile subscriptions increased to 134.5 million as at September 2014 from 95 million in 2011. Tele-density increased to 96 per cent in September 2014 from 68 per cent in 2011
“The total mobile internet subscriptions increased to 73.8 million as at September 2014 from 45 million in 2011. Internet penetration increased to about 52 per cent in September 2014 from about 26.5 per cent in September 2011.”
Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Eugene Juwah said there has been a phenomenal growth in the telecoms sector, adding that it has done better than any other sectors in the country.
He said: “In our country (Nigeria), for instance, we now have a total number of 134 million connected lines and a teledensity of 96 per cent with about 29,000 base stations for both GSM and CDMA service providers as at December 2013.”
SIM card registration
A SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) Card is the card issued by mobile phone operators which provides the individual user with the appropriate number recognised by that network. A subcriber inserts the card into his or her mobile phone to access the service provider’s network.
Since the launch of the GSM services in 2001, SIM cards were offered to subscribers without the requirement to provide proper identification by the users.
However, sometime in early 2008, security agencies approached the NCC to assist in resolving crimes perpetrated with the use of phones. Prior to the SIM registration, it was difficult to unmask criminal elements with the number of the phones that they used.
Consequently, the NCC held a consultative forum involving various telecoms operators, consumer groups, security agencies, telecoms associations, dealers, the Nigerian Identity Management Commission, National Population Commission (NIMC), National Census Commission, the media and a host of other stakeholders.
The participants agreed to the appropriateness and importance to have the record of register all phone users in the country. Another committee was subsequently set up to appraise the details of the implementation of the registration and submit its recommendations to the NCC.
Upon reviewing the recommendations of the committee, the NCC Board approved the registration of all phone subscribers in the country.
The registration began in Abuja on March 28, 2011, when Dr. Juwah launched the registration.
On completion of the validation, harmonisation and scrubbing of the records of all registered SIM cards, operators were mandated to disconnect all unregistered SIM cards from their networks.
Director, Public Affairs at the NCC, Tony Ojobo, said the registration helped in no small measure to unmask those behind commercial kidnappings, a time-honoured predilection of youths in the Southsouth and Southeastern parts of the country. Though largely cricised for its imperfections, analysts say it was a good thing for a country that never had any data base at all.
Mobile Number Portability (MNP)
With the registration of all the active SIM cards, the regulator declared the coast cleared for the introduction of other schemes that will consolidate on the gains of the revolution. Two of these were the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) scheme and Mobile Money.
Juwah informed that the NCC had selected a consortium of three companies – Interconnect, Saab Grintek and Telcordia – to manage the implementation of MNP. The consortium, according to him, has responsibility to set up and implement the MNP Clearing House and administer MNP in the country.
MNP allows a subscriber to abandon his/her inefficient service provider and still retain his/her old number. According to Juwah, MNP has been identified as one service that could further deepen competiveness in the telecommunications market, adding that with the growing reliance and dependency on mobile communications for everyday socio-economic interactions, it became imperative to give the customer more freedom to choose.
He said: “The vision of the Commission is not only to provide access to telecommunication services to Nigerians at affordable cost but to also to continue to provide the required stimulus and appropriate environment for the introduction of innovative services that will impact on quality telecoms service delivery.
“Our mobile subscriber numbers have become our identity and in most cases, we are required to provide our mobile (telephone) numbers while filling out forms in opening bank accounts, making hotel and airline bookings.
“With the launch of MNP, consumers of telecommunications services will no longer need to acquire new numbers in order to move from one network to the other. They will simply take along their existing numbers to any network of their choice. The power and freedom of choice will henceforth, rest with the consumer. If a consumer is dissatisfied with the quality of services being provided by a service provider, she/he can simply port out of that network to any network of his/her choice without losing his/her subscriber number.”
According to Juwah, with the launch of MNP, there will be no need for customers to engage in the usually painful exercise of trying to commit phone numbers to memory, neither will they need to frequently change complimentary cards, billboards, letter-heads and other corporate documents.
He added that MNP will revolutionise the way calls are currently being routed since the National Destination Codes (NDC), that is, the network prefix such as 0802, 0803, 0805, 0809 usually identified with operators no longer play the role of unique identifier. He added that the NCC adopted the ‘All Call Query (ACQ)’ option for routing calls and SMS in line with international best practices, preparatory to the implementation of MNP.
Though the scheme has not recorded any huge success, owing largely to lack of awareness, the NCC insisted that the idea is not about the total number of people porting from one service provider to the other but the fact that the freedom is there for subscribers. According to the regulator, the mere fact that operators know MNP scheme is in place, their attitude to upgrading their equipment and general customer care would change.
Mobile Money
Under the Connect Nigerians, Digital payments and Financial Inclusion Initiative of the Federal Government, it was discovered that more people have access to mobile phones than to bank accounts with 75 per cent of adults living in urban areas and 39 per cent living in rural areas.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has licensed 18 Mobile Money Operators since the scheme began about four years ago.
Approximately, one million subscribers have taken advantage of the scheme while there are about 67,000 registered agents across the country.
Over 11 million transactions worth over $600 million have been conducted using the platform. Uptake has been slow but analysts say improved infrastructure, fine-tuning of legislation and increasing confidence in product by consumers will stimulate acceleration.
“Mobile money is mostly used to buy airtime; it, however, has the potential to draw more patrons into formal financial services,” the minister said.
However, the dearth of insurance, agents and lowlevel of awareness have been identified as major challenges hindering the success of the scheme
Executive Director, Digital Africa, Dr. Armstrung Takang, who spoke with The Nation in Lagos, said the project, which was designed to complement the cashless policy of the CBN has failed to grow because the agents, from whom money would be collected are not there while the people do not have confidence that when they lose their money online, there will be anybody to hold responsible.
The issue of who is liable for loss of money in the course of using mobile money platform has always been avoided by the CBN and operators of the 18 licensed firms.
Takang said the absence of an insurance firm to bear the risk of victims using the platform was a great dis-incentive, adding that the existence of the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Company (NDIC) encouraged people to use the banks because they know that in the event of a failure, they will not lose their entire deposits.
He said: “There is need to have insurance to guarantee confidence so that I can say to you that if you use your phone to transfer money and there is a problem and you lose money, I guarantee that you will not lose that money. It is like when we have NDIC in banking. You and I will go and open an account. If that bank goes down, I know I can go to NDIC and I will get my money. If you lose money online, what happens? It is still a grey area.”
Another problem is the lack of awareness. “There is no awareness that your phone can become a banking hall, your wallet and the money that is transmitted through credit on your phone is as good as the money that you get through the traditional banking halls. This is still lacking among majority of Nigerians,” he said.
Even if the two obstacles are addressed, the absence of mobile money agents will be another contraints. Mobile money agents are the last on the value chain. It is from them that people will collect the cards sent through the mobile phone.
“Another major aspect is that of having agents to collect cash when the cash is needed. The agents are supposed to be ubiquitous but they are not there,” he said.
He called for the enactment of the enabling laws and provision of requisite security platforms in terms of technology to ensure that these transactions are safe enough to inspire confidence in those saddled with the responsibility to manage the scheme.
The CEO, Etisalat, Mathiew Wilsher, said all the stakeholders, including the CBN, NCC and operators must come together and instutionalise an efficient framework for the success of the scheme.
have always believed that the CBN, NCC, telecommunication operators and banks need to build efficient mobile money structure that will guarantee the project’s success. Mobile money remains a convenient, secure and affordable way to send money to friends and family.
“As at today, mobile money remains a huge business opportunity for stakeholders, but there is the need to get the fundamentals right. It is only when the fundamentals, like knowing whether a bank-led or telco-led model is best for the country, that the level of success expected would be achieved. At Etisalat, we are committed to the mobile money project. We see a lot of business potential in this field. But, like I said, regulators and other stakeholders need to get the fundamentals right,” he told The Nation.
Impact in agric, education, health sectors.
The importance of the revolution has been tremendous in the agric sector. It has ended the long years of rackeering in the fertiliser distribution scheme. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina said the importance of the cell phones to farmers cannot be overemphasised.
He said: “It is actually the cell phone that has provided us with the tool to directly access each farmer thereby denying corrupt middlemen from making fortune from their sweat. Some people think that our farmers are uneducated and cannot use cell phones. The evidence does not support that. Under the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme, we made it possible for farmers to transact business in their own local languages using their cell phones.
“We intend to use the GES scheme to distribute these phones. To be entitled to a phone, every farmer must be registered on the e-wallet platform. Paper vouchers will be issued to farmers who do not have phones. The government will provide a subsidy to the farmer through the voucher to buy the phone. The farmer takes the voucher to the local mobile phone operator and pays the balance which is the difference between the value of the voucher and the cost of the phone.
“Once a farmer buys a phone and a SIM card, his new phone number will be updated on the e-wallet database and he will be able to receive his e-wallet voucher which will entitle him to purchase fertilizer and seeds at subsidised rates. Phones will be sold directly to farmers by local mobile phone service providers.”
According to him, the total number of transactions done by phone with respect to the GES scheme stood at 4.9 million, relying on available data, based on farmers’ use of cellphones to access fertilizers and seeds last year.
Adesina explained that out of the 4.9 million transactions, 1.2 million were in English, 620,000 were in Pidgin (English), 2.2 million were in Hausa, 854,000 were in Yoruba while 344 were in Igbo languages.
According to him, in the first year of the GES scheme, 1.2 million farmers received their subsidised fertilizers and seeds through their cell phones, saying that the number is expected to grow to 1.5 million farmers by the end of the dry season.
He gave the percentage of beneficiaries from the distribution of fertilizers and seeds through mobile phones, at 25 per cent from the Northwest, 12 per cent (Southeast) 13 per cent in the Southsouth, 10 per cent in the Southwest, 18 per cent in the Northcentral and 22 per cent in the Northeast.
Adesina, however, said that 71 per cent of farmers sampled are yet to enjoy cell phone facility because many of the farmers in rural areas are poor and are excluded from the benefits of the on-going mobile phone revolution.
According to him, the use of mobile phones to distribute fertilisers and seeds to farmers has recorded tremendous success in countries such as Kenya and Malawi.
Its impact on the education sector is supposed to be revolutionary. With mobile phones that are internet-enabled, online access to resource materials on virtually every subject matter becomes easy. Similarly, there is now access to e-book which could be read online while student could do quite a number of things on their mobile devices, especially in the tablets age.
In the health sector, the mobile operators have launched one mobile health insurance policy or the other. A sector analyst says it is too early to start feeling the impact of some of the health initiatives. But health tips sent through the mobile phone has been of tremendous success in the Abiye health initiative that has put and to pregnancy from turning to a death penalty.
Each ranger or health facility is equipped with means of vehicular movement and evacuation of patients ranging from customised motorcycles to tricycle and 4-wheeled ambulances. Speedboat ambulances were earmarked for the riverine areas. To facilitate communication, individual mobile phones on a toll free caller-user group platform were provided for the pregnant women and their care-givers.
The bad, the ugly
President, Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), Bayo Banjo, said there are some bad sides to the widespread adoption of Information Communications Technology (ICT). According to him, “one of them is this job called Yahoo-Yahoo, a lot of our young people and even older people are involved in this but of course, in any new innovation, there are always the bad sides.”
Steady decline in students’ performance
There has been steady decline in the standard of education with the country recording 70 per cent failure rate in the result of this year’s West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE).
Head, National Office of West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Mr. Charles Eguridu said a total of 1,705,976 candidates registered for the examination, but only 1,692,435 candidates, consisting of 929,075 male and 763,360 female candidates eventually wrote the examination.
Out of the 1,692,435 that wrote the examination, a total of 529,425 candidates, representing 31.28 per cent, obtained credit passes in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics.
He said the 2014 May/June result when compared to that of the last two year’s, showed a marginal decline in the performance of candidates.
According to him, in the May/June 2012 WASCE, 38.81 per cent of the candidates that sat for the examinations obtained five credit passes and above including English Language and Mathematics. In 2013, the percentage declined to 36.57 per cent, as against the 31.28 per cent recorded currently.
Details of the current results as presented by Eguridu, revealed that 791,227 candidates, representing 46.75 per cent, obtained six credits and above while 982,472 candidates representing 58.05 per cent, obtained five credits and above.
Also 1,148,262 candidates, representing 67.84 per cent, obtained credits and above in four subjects; 1,293,389 candidates, representing 76.42 per cent, obtained credits and above in three subjects; while 1,426,926 candidates, representing 84.31 per cent obtained credits and above in two subjects.
A total number of 161 blind candidates, he added, registered for the examination, out of which 150 participated. From this figure, 21 candidates, representing 14 per cent obtained credits in five subjects, including English Language. Visually-impaired candidates, Eguridu noted, do not write Mathematics and science practical’s in the WASCE.
He further disclosed that 1,605,613 candidates, representing 94.87 per cent had their results fully released, while 86,822 candidates, representing 5.13 per cent have a few of their subjects still being processed due to some errors, traced mainly to laxity on the part of the candidates and the schools, in the course of registration or writing the examination.
He blamed parents for the dismal performance of students in the examination. He alleged that parents have abdicated their role model functions to the pursuit of money.
He said: “With this presentation, most Nigerians would quickly place the blame at the doorstep of schools and government. But they will not be quick enough to compare what quality used to be in those days when parents were part of their wards learning. Contemporary parents no longer show commitment to the learning outcomes of their children. Parents are now too busy to monitor and guide their children towards hard work as well as complement teachers’ efforts.
“Everyone seems to have forgotten that those who excel in life are those who do what others are unable to do, going the extra mile with their studies to achieve success. There has been a steady decline in the last two years, though records show that the decline is marginal, but with the slight decline, we cannot say the students have not done well. Nigerian students performed comparatively well, when compared to other students in other WAEC countries, particularly in Mathematics.”
But the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Tai Solarin University of Education, Prof Joseph Olusanya, identified the widespread use of mobile devices as a major factor responsible for the declining fortunes of the education sector.
He said: “Most of them are busy chatting on phone and playing with computers and laptops. Students nowadays depend on “orijo” which makes reading culture to be on a low side. They are fond of cutting corners,” he said.
A school tutor at Prudent Comprehensive College, Mr Olawale agrees no less with the deputy vice chancellor.
He said: “Parents are to blame because they equip their children with tools which they fail to monitor their usage. Experience has shown that while lectures are going on, student bury their heads on the desks browsing the internet, chatting on Facebook and posting goofy pictures on Instagram. It is now common to see students spend valuable time pinging on their Blackberry phones. The situation has been made worse now that the BBM application could easily be downloaded from Google Play store free of charge.”
Armed robbery, kidnap-for-ransom
While the NCC said SIM registration has reduced crime rate in the country, stakeholders insist it has not as some unscrupulous elements within the system still sell pre-registered SIM cards to criminals who use and dump them after perpetrating crimes, leaving no trace behind.
Banjo said: “When mobile phones came, I remember I had to caution people who said, oh things will be fantastic, you can call the police, you can call this, you can call that but the reverse is the case. “Now the armed robber can use the phone to warn his people carrying out an operation that police are around. A criminally-minded bank official can call someone and say XYZ has just withdrawn N4 million cash, meet him at such and such places. So in any innovation, there is always the good and the bad side.”
BTS and health challenges
As ICT pervade all aspects of modern living there are increases in radio frequency radiation emitted by more and more Base Transmission Stations (BTS), especially those installations erected in residential areas.
Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) studies are yet to find any clear risk or health hazards associated with electromagnetic fields based on current findings, there are indeed fears that BTS erected in residential areas poses health risks to those living close to them.
Indeed, there have been a couple of cases where some people were diagnosed and cause of their illness traced to emission from radio frequency emissions. There are about 29,000 BTS across the country but between 70,00 and 80,000 are required to enthrone seamless telecoms service delivery. Increasingly, fears about the likely harmful effects of BTS are making people to be wary of offering their compounds as sites for BTS, regardless of the financial inducements.
