TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE TELECOMS INDUSTRY IN NIGERIA SINCE INDEPENDENCE
BY FUNKE ATOHENGBE

 

Telecommunications in Nigeria has transited from a docile sector since independence in 1960 to a major player in the country's economic development.

Although telecommunications started in Nigeria in 1886 under colonial rule, it was used to promote colonial interest rather than the socio-economic development of Nigeria . The colonial administration employed public telegraph services to link Lagos on the sub-marine cables along the West Coast of Africa such as Ghana , Sierra Leone and Gambia to England . Consequently, the number of phone lines in Nigeria at independence was only eighteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty four for a population of about forty million.

This later changed with the establishment of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, NITEL, in 1985. This was followed by the partial deregulation of the sector in the late 1990's by the military government at that time, leading to the entrance of many private telephone operators into the sector with NITEL retaining some measure of its monopoly.

However, this did not achieve the desired result as the cost of acquiring a telephone line was beyond the reach of the ordinary man. Also, the monopoly enjoyed by NITEL did not help achieve government's objectives of improving the country's teledensity. Nigeria had only two hundred thousand phone lines in 1985 even with the introduction of the coin pay-phone system.

All these however became history when in 2001, government, through its regulatory agency, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, granted licenses to three firms to operate the Global System of Mobile Communication, GSM. The firms are, MTN, MTEL (the mobile arm of NITEL) and Econet, now Zain. The number of GSM providers has increased to six with the licensing of Globacom, an indigenous company and the latest being Etisalat. This development finally broke NITEL's monopoly with the attendant nose-diving of the cost of acquiring phones resulting in the high teledensity which the country now enjoys.

With over sixty million telephone lines in rural and urban centres, from less than half a million before the advent of GSM in 2001, Nigeria's telecoms is acknowledged the fastest growing sector and the largest generator of Foreign Direct Investment after oil and Gas. Nigeria is also reckoned as the fastest telecommunications market in Africa and the sector is the highest employer of labour.

The introduction of the unified licensing scheme has further liberalised the operational system and enabled private telephone operators to provide a range of services at moderate prices. Also, the 3G technology which is a higher grade of mobile telephony has fully taken off, bringing telecom services in Nigeria at par with global trends.

The launch of Nigeria 's Communication Satellite, NIGCOMSAT-1 in 2007, the first in Africa , has provided the impetus that could take the country and other African nations to higher pedestal in the area of telephony, broadcasting, Internet and broadband services. This is now supported by the successful completion of the optic fibre link across West Africa by one of the GSM operators, Globacom.

With these successes, broadband and Internet services are expected to improve tremendously. Given its feat in the telecom sector in fifty years of existence, Nigeria has set a solid foundation to its target of becoming one of the top twenty economies of the world by the Year 2020.

 

Broadcast on Monday, 4 th October 2010