By IPS Correspondents
LAGOS, Feb 7 2001 (IPS)

Nigeria’s telecommunications nightmare may soon be a thing of the past, if the four companies that won the licences to provide Global System of Mobile (GSM) communications pay up by Friday.

Each of the companies — the state-owned Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL), Communications Investment Limited, MTN Nigeria Communication Limited, a South African subsidiary, and ECONET Wireless, a Zimbabwean firm — is expected to pay a licence fee of 285 million dollars to the Chase Manhattan bank in New York.

Beyond the celebrations that accompanied the historic GSM licence auction in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, on Jan 17-19, is the appalling state of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector.

Telephone lines are a luxury in Africa’s most populous nation. For a nation of an estimated 115 million people the total of available 800,000 lines falls far short of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) prescription of at least one telephone per 100 people.

Most of NITEL’s physical structures are archaic, underground cables are rusty and as old as 20 years. The rate of breakdowns are legendary and corruption among officials is endemic. It is not uncommon that a phone call to a friend opens vistas into other phone conversations sometimes kilometres away. This phenomenon, called “jamming”, is common in Nigeria.

Of NITEL’s 276 telephone exchanges nationwide, only 97 are digitalised, and they affect social services. “When light goes off in our local exchange, our phones also go dead”, a housewife at Yaba, a surburb of Lagos, told IPS this week.

Haruna Elewi, Minister of State for Communications, says telephone will soon be available at cheaper rate to consumers, irrespective of status. “Within the next three years, land line including connection fee will come down to 5,000 Naira (less than 50 Dollars) because we are going to deploy a minimum of five million lines,” he said.

He added that: “When all these dreams become reality, you will begin to see that our services are affordable and it will not be an executive product”.

Last year, the government reduced the cost of procuring a line from 60,000 Naira (about 600 Dollars) to 15,000 Naira (about 150 Dollars) in a bid to make telephone lines cheaper. It never materialised. Mobile telephone still cost as much as 900 Dollars.

Expected with the GSM licences are a minimum of 100,000 digital lines from each of the four companies within the first year of operation, and 300,000 land lines each by the end of the first year of operation.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has already issued licences to the companies within a 900-1800 megahertz bands. An annual operating levy representing 2.5 per cent of the licence’s audited net revenue is expected to be paid within three months at the end of the second year of operation, according to the NCC.

Expectations of the citizenry over the GSM, the digital system, which allows improved frequency efficiency and the provision of narrow band data services as well as voice telephony, is very high.

“We are hopeful that the GSM will end our ordeal with the phone system in Nigeria,” journalist Ojonelu Okolo says. “For one whose livelihood depends on an efficient telecommunications system, it’s been one hell of a time. You have to have supreme patience to dial a number here”.

Nigeria seems to have come of age now. “There was a time when we were told that phones were not for the poor,” recalls Okolo. This is in reference to a statement made by a Communications Minister in the military government of President Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) that telephones are like beautiful women who cost money to date.

The improved system also will help consumers like Olumide Opeyemi, a student at the University of Ibadan, 120 kilometres north of Lagos, who queues for hours outside his campus to make a call home every week. “I really think it is wonderful…it will give everyone the run for their money”, he says.

Opeyemi, 23, also believes that improved telecommunications “will do a lot for the literacy level. The internet access for instance will raise the literacy level”. The average literacy level in the West African country stands at 50 per cent.

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