Good things take time. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. When the government of General Ibrahim Babangida deregulated the telecoms sector in 1992, it took nearly 10 years for us to start seeing the results - starting with the auctioning of GSM licences by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2001. Today, Nigeria's telecoms sector is an enormous success story. It has created a new generation of millionaires and billionaires, and generated millions of jobs directly and indirectly.
Imagine what the multiplier effect of telecoms wealth has been: the billion-naira businesses for engineering companies, software designers, handset dealers and accessory sellers; the sponsorship and endorsement deals for entertainment and sport worth billions; the advertising revenue for the media; the life-impacting projects in the form of CSR, and so on. It's an entirely new economy. It's one story you want replicated in several underdeveloped sectors of the economy.
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