Title: Our Nigerian Story
Author: Olabisi Olaleye
Publisher: Praying Hands Ventures
Reviewer: Steve Nwosu
Introduction
When, sometime in 1998, I paid for my first real apartment in Lagos – a two-bedroom flat, I also moved to procure a landline from NITEL. Apart from the various un-receipted monies I had to ‘drop’ here and there, I forked out an official N25,000.
Three years later, I was still chasing my file from one office to the other. There was neither a telephone line nor any trace of the N25,000 I paid. In fact, at some point, the entire file vanished into thin air. Somebody at the then Iponri, Lagos office of NITEL still wanted me to ‘drop something’, to enable him go look for the file.
We were still at it when the GSM companies rolled out in 2001.
So, whoever bought over NITEL should not forget that my N25,000 is still with them. Of course, I’m ready to convert it to equity if they would offer me the 1998 value – plus interest.
And so, enter the GSM… I got my first line a few weeks after MTN rolled out. The handset – an Erickson T-20 flip phone, came at a handsome N24,000. The SIM card cost me another N20,000 (I laugh at the thought of it today), and I had to cough out N1,500 for caller ID, and another N1,500 for Call Waiting. We have definitely come a long way!
Painfully, not too many authors appear to have captured our telephony experience in a READABLE book form. And that is why I’m particularly thrilled by this work for which we are gathered here today: OUR NIGERIAN STORY
Not an orthodox book
Let me begin by saying that this is not your orthodox book review… because this is no orthodox book. I am simply going to talk about this book, and if that amounts to a review for some of us here today, we’ll give thanks to God.
I have always believed that it is laziness, lack of creativity or outright intellectual arrogance that have left our bookstores and bookshelves stocked with books that nobody is reading. Books that we buy (and display), simply because we want to be seen to ‘belong’. Books we keep until when we want to lift a quote, or two, to churn out yet another unreadable book or thesis.
It has become even more so with the now-generation that seems more interested in pressing their phones and surfing the Internet than burrowing through boring lines. Yet, we say the reading culture is dying.
But then, even the most technical subject can be reduced to simple language and everyday-imagery, so that people who are not experts in that particular field can comfortably follow developments in that field. That is what this book, ‘Our Nigerian Story’ has done for me – with regards to telephony and ICT. Today, I know about Dropped Calls, Interconnectivity, Broadband, Fibre Optics, SAT3, Spectrum, LTE and all that.
May be I should give a little background here, with barely a session to rounding off my undergraduate programme at the university, the school authorities began to moot the idea of introducing Computer Studies to the curriculum for Mass Communication. With a mortal fear of mathematics, Statistics, and anything that pandered towards calculation, I instantly joined a small pressure group charged with lobbying the authorities not to extend the proposal to those of us who were already rounding off our programme.
But, thankfully, we didn’t need to lobby. The new curriculum was rescheduled to commence with new intakes – the freshmen of the new session.
Happy as we were with that development, we did not know that we’d done ourselves great disservice – for no sooner had we left school than we realised computer had preceded us to the workplace. There was no running away from computer and ICT.
A layman’s guide
Today, despite a few crash programmes here and there, I remain, largely on the periphery of the ICT revolution. I remain a full-time member of that unenviable club of Nigerians who have never used up to 10% of the things their mobile phones are capable of doing. Many of us only make and receive voice calls and SMS.
I’m a member of the club that, though proudly flaunting the latest Samsung phones, would walk the length and breadth of Lagos, looking for a business centre with good scanners to scan and send our documents.
Simply put, I’m not a techie, and, therefore, would ordinarily not be the person expected to review a book on telecommunication and ICT. But that I’m standing before you today to do just that is a testimony to the fact that this book is readable.
It is not a collection of technical, InfoTech jargons, which make meaning only to ICT experts and initiates of the ICT ‘cult’.
For me, this book is a bridge between the expert and the layman. For me, Our Nigerian Story is the layman’s manual to the world of telephony and ICT. It is an excursion in which the tour guide is herself a tourist. She breaks everything down in simple language. She does not just drop some pedantic terminologies and move on, arrogantly believing that we all understand and are following her. She takes her time to explain.
I, for instance, have been hearing of Broadband for so long without really knowing what it was all about. I just got to know that it’s just about “high-speed internet access”.
For me, Our Nigerian Story is where Mass Communication meets Telecommunication (and ICT). It is a major step towards bringing the populace aboard the ICT revolution. It is the missing link between the experts and we, the masses and the non-initiates.
Our story
I can’t pretend to have become a telephony expert overnight, though. My job, of reviewing this work, was deliberately made easier by the Foreword and the Preface respectively written by Leo-Stan Ekeh and Femi Adesina. And, as if those two weren’t enough, there is also an “Introduction” by the current Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu.
Yes, everybody that is anybody in contemporary telephony in Nigeria is either featured here, or has put in a word or two. That is why Our Nigerian Story – though just about 195 pages – is almost an encyclopedia of some sort.
Even Leo-Stan Ekeh captured this fact in his Foreword:
“Beyond voice calls and data usage on mobile devices, many might not be aware of the depth and diversity of the telecoms sector. That is why this book is important. Consider it not a technology book, but rather a general study book on ICT development in Nigeria. It is a history book. It is also a book about business, about the dynamics of entrepreneurship in the telecoms industry”
If, like me, you don’t know anything about 2G and 3G, or you always thought 4G meant four grands (as in four thousand dollars), this book is sure to save you a few blushes. It would even widen your horizon to the possibility of a 5G. And, you wouldn’t even know when you assimilated so much knowledge. This is because the most complicated technical jargons are broken down to everyday-language. That is the beauty of this book.
Most of all, as Femi Adesina noted in the Preface, the author gives a helicopter view of an emergent, yet very challenging telecoms sector, “accentuating the dichotomy and accounting for the various players, from network operators to InfraCos and Value Added Services Operators (VASO), to mobile device vendors and, to policy makers and regulators, how they interface to give subscribers telecoms experience”.
The book is divided into four broad parts thus:
1. The Evolution – where she not only captures the pioneering efforts of the MTN group, but captures the telecoms situation in Nigeria before the advent of GSM, the years of NITEL monopoly, the liberalization, the CDMAs, the auctioning of GSM licences, the roll-out of GSM services, the explosion – from 400,000 telephone lines to about 150 million active telephone lines today and emergence of Africa’s largest and fastest growing telecommunication industry. This session also captures the business opportunities therein, as well as how virtually every aspect of life – and living – in Nigeria has been positively affected. It also looks at the potentials for new businesses, and the challenges of the new order.
2. The Gridlock – This section runs from Chapter 4 to Chapter 20. It focuses on key players in the industry, beginning with the GSM companies and how they are dealing with the challenge of premium Quality of Service and competition. There is also a lot of insight into some of the behind-the-scene stories, and improvised theatrics, of the emergence of all the five GSM companies – MTN, Airtel, Globacom, Etisalat and nTEL. It takes the reader from Lagos to South Africa, India, Dubai, Abuja and back to Lagos, using unreal names to tell real stories. There is also an ample coverage of the regulators, as well as providers of support services.
3. The Opportunities – This section focuses on major players in the area of spin-off businesses of the telecom revolution, from the ‘bullish’ Slot to online supermarkets, hardware and software dealers and products. It is basically a spillover from PART 2. Apart from unmasking the men and women behind these concepts, the author also looks at the inherent business propositions.
4. Interviews and Stories – As the title suggests, the last section is a republication of related stories and interviews conducted by the author and published in the titles of The Sun Newspapers. They provide further insights into many of the issues treated in the book, as well as a few other areas not captured in the other sections
Strength
The strength of this book, Our Nigerian Story, lies in the style of presentation. The author found a smart way of presenting the behind the scene stories that often escape everyday reporting. Incontrovertible facts are presented in a style that flows like fiction. The usually hard-nosed InfoTech issues are suddenly given a human face, sometimes, by creatively evoking real situations in the lives and families of the key characters.
We see this throughout the book from the exchange between Zinox’s Leo-Stan Ekeh and his son over Yudala to the discussions at a lunch meeting in Dubai (Etisalat), Osondu and the traffic policeman (nTEL), the magic of 23 (Airtel), President Obasanjo’s dropped call and NCC, Governor Olusegun Mimiko’s birthing of Kaadi Igbe Ayo etc.
The Oversights
Of course, I noticed a few typos, but I put down to the fact that this book, which includes such recent developments as the launch of nTEL, must have been produced in a record time. I also put it down to the fact that, due to the frequency with which new developments pop up in this ever-growing industry, the author was probably forced to impose a cut-off time. Meanwhile, if she’d waited to cross all the ‘t’s and dot all the ‘i’s, the book would be too stale by the time it’s ready for release.
What this means is that a follow-up edition of this book we’re presenting today is already overdue. That’s more work for the author.
* I also have an issue with the font size. Considering that many of us who still read books don’t have the same eyes we once had, it could be very punishing purring through the pages. Thankfully, the beautiful design of both the cover and the inside pages (with the thematic Green-White-Green of the Nigerian flag) adequately compensates for the tiny prints.
Conclusion
This is a very readable book. It is a great effort at blending facts and functionality. It’s breezy – Maybe, because a journalist wrote it. It is a book I would not hesitate to recommend to anybody who desires to refreshing view of how telecoms moved from contributing less than 1% of our GDP in 1990 to a whooping 8.5% of a $520 billion GDP in 2015.