Okoh Aihe
26 May 2008
Lagos — Sunday May 11, 2007. Between the immigrations and the security machines which shouldn't take more than two minutes for passengers going abroad the light went out four times.
That was at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, the country's gateway to the international community where power outage is supposed to be the remotest consideration. Each time the light went off, the machines had to reboot, that means the passengers would have to wait for the machines to come on.
Quite surprisingly, nobody felt indignant. Nigerians have gone beyond anger. They are simply numbed by bizarre developments of failure in the land.
The power sector is hitting hard on life in Nigeria and operators in the telecoms industry, especially mobile operators are gnashing their teeth. When there is light outage, the base stations stop working. For this reasons generators are deployed to base stations across the country and deployment has reached a scandalous level.
The peculiar nature of mobile technology is that it depends on base stations to take signals from place to place and feed the subscribers who are always on the move. For this reason the operators are in a fierce fight to plant base stations because the more base stations an operator has the better coverage and more efficient service.
A study by Vanguard revealed that the 12, 000 base stations in Nigeria, 10, 000 for the three major mobile operators, MTN, Glo and Celtel, and 2, 000 for Fixed Wireless operators, with 24, 000 generators - two per station for constant power supply - are fired by nearly 1.9bn litres of diesel and take N6. 751 trillion out of the Nigerian economy.
This is massive depletion of, and misdirection of scarce resources. Money that should have been deployed to the expansion of network and provision of efficient services has suddenly been taken to a needless area if things were working efficiently.
But if the sector is swallowing so much money it is not showing in the quality of service being provided by the operators. While some are calling for their licenses to be withdrawn, others are simply seeking ways to hang the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, for not superintending the industry well.
The operators say the money they are spending on generators, diesel and security for the base stations is enough to clean up their networks and services better. While this is true, Nigerians who spend their money on recharge cards are not waiting for any explanation.
But also more curiously the National Assembly which is in a better position to explain the situation to Nigerians is more emotive about it; if their position has not been mere exhibition, it is totally that of ignorance.
There is a power probe at the National Assembly. But it is in the Public Hearing in the lower and the upper houses on the quality of GSM services that some of the most inflammatory statements by the lawmakers have been made, giving the impression to some discerning hearts that they really don't know how deep-seated the power problem is. For instance, when the mobile operators, complained about the absence of power for their operations, some lawmakers retorted that they knew the power situation in the country before bidding to provide service here.
The first ever GSM auctions took place in Nigeria in 2001. Immediately the operators committed by paying the license fee of $285m each. Since then more monies have been paid to the sector. In one fell swoop last year, the government reaped $600m from 3G licenses and another $400m from Mubadala Trading Company of the United Arab Emirates, UAE, which now trades as Emerging Markets Telecom Services Limited. Etisalat is operating this license.
At the time firm promises were made about the power sector being transformed in the country. Years later, the situation is worse with power generation falling to an all time low. However when the lawmakers complain about the bad situation already known to the operators, what they are saying is that for nearly nine years Nigerians have been too inadequate mentally to solve a single problem. For them Nigeria is a country where even simple problems cannot be addressed.
That is not true. Nigeria is a country flowing with human capacity to perform in every field of endeavour but those who rule the country give contrary impression. Those in authority have refused to empower the right people. For instance, the country's telecom sector was deregulated in 1992, six clear years before Egypt would do the same thing in 1998.
But while Egypt could immediately put themselves together and by August 2005, had about 10.1million fixed lines and 11.2million mobile lines, Nigeria had about 400, 000 fixed lines for a population of 140 million people - Egypt has a population of 70million - and about 5million mobile lines. Egypt had a backbone to support those who were coming into the deregulated sector. Nigeria never had any. Even now connected Nitel lines are less than 40,000.The organisation is bleeding very badly and cannot even support itself let alone others.
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