NIGERIA-COMMUNICATIONS: Pot Holes On Information Highway

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ojonelu Okolo

LAGOS, Oct 18 1995 (IPS) - Nigerians struggling to join the super information highway face the most basic of problems — telephones that work and a regular electricity supply.

Nigeria had only three telephone mainlines per 1,000 people in 1992, according to the World Bank’s World Development Report. Worse, on each 100 lines, an average of 327 faults were reported — a world record.

In developed nations a modem and computer is all any aspiring “netter” needs to surf the Internet — telephones and an electricity supply that works are taken for granted. In Nigeria, and much of the rest of Africa, it’s not that simple when power regularly fails and ‘phones go on the blink.

“You can’t change NEPA and NITEL (the state-owned electricity and telecommunications corporations) in a day,” says Obalolu Adekanmi of the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), an NGO spearheading Internet access.

It’s is not that Nigeria lacks the technical expertise. The growth of personal computer sales outstrips the world average of 10 percent a month, analysts here say.

And, in a case of taking coals to Newcastle, a Nigerian company, Tara Systems, is exporting banking software to the United States. AT and T this year chose its autobank system as the basis for their new package for 800 banks in the US.

Although individuals and organisations can already hook up to the Internet via providers in Europe, what the NIG wants is full connectivity — a reliable direct fibre optics, leased line or satellite link with a core Internet site in the United States.

That would mean Nigeria joining Ghana, South Africa and Zambia as the only countries in sub-Saharan Africa with full connectivity.

Setting up an Internet node though doesn’t come cheap, around 252,000 dollars a year, NIG says.

The group however does have some weighty members, including the Central Bank, the Nigerian Communications Commission — the country’s communications regulator — universities and leading companies in information technology.

But Nigeria needs first a national network as a backbone through which computers in the country can be linked together, says Lanre Ajayi, a network consultant.

“The network would have gateways by which it can connect to the global information superhighway,” says Ajayi, network administrator of a local NGO, Foundation for Environmental Development and Education in Nigeria.

Increasing numbers of Nigerians are using electronic mail, and one of the country’s newest banks recently proclaimed with pride that its customers could now make remote enquiries on their accounts through the bank’s database from anywhere on the globe.

It may be a small step for many countries in the world but a giant leap for Nigeria.

As workplaces become increasingly automated, students from primary school to universities are fast recognising the need for computer literacy.

“I took courses in computer studies in the last two sessions,” says Michael Oloko, a part two law student at the University of Benin, about 300 kms from Lagos.

The university also runs a degree programme in computer science as do many of the country’s other 50 universities and polytechnics.

There is however a big ‘But’ — what most students know is the theory, they rarely get to grips with the computers themselves.

“We have to queue for the few computers in our laboratory … only a few are in working condition,” a student at a technical college here notes.

In a country where the minimum monthly wage is around 10 dollars, a basic personal computer sells for about 2,000 dollars, a small fortune.

It means that Nigeria mirrors the wider division in access to information between the industrialised and underdeveloped world — it is at the moment restricted to the wealthy.

The NIG’s priority however is to provide Internet access “at affordable cost to the Nigeria-based end-users,” says Adekanmi.

He is confident that Nigeria will join the super information highway by the end of the year, despite the roadblocks in the form of the telephone and power authorities.

NIGERIA-COMMUNICATIONS: Pot Holes On Information Highway

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ojonelu Okolo

LAGOS, Oct 18 1995 (IPS) - Nigerians struggling to join the super information highway face the most basic of problems — telephones that work and a regular electricity supply.
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