Cellular riots in Nigeria
Or: a somewhat hectic Sunday excursion with the Nobel...
Well, in former days we could simply travel quietly, peacefully and have a good and deep conversation while on the road... but those days are long gone! ‘Former days’… those were the days of the so-called ‘fixed’ phone or ‘land-line’. If one was lucky enough to have such a line, that is. Most of the time one did NOT. For that, for several decades, was the reality in the oil-country better known as Nigeria.
In the past three or four years, however, Nigeria has been ‘blessed’ by the wild spread of the cellular phone. After having been excluded from modern communication for decades, Nigeria has simply made the ‘big leap’ and jumped directly into the cellular age; straight from the Talking Drum to the ‘portable’, the telefonino’, or, as the Germans most fittingly say, the ‘Handy’.
I really don’t know a single Nigerian who does NOT own at least one. Most probably own three or four of these miracle gadgets. And that is true also of the roadside car mechanic genius, the market mammy or ‘Mama-Benz’ and the roadside-tout in the ubiquitous traffic-jams. When we go out for dinner in Lagos, friends will usually put three or four cellulars on the table since some of the so-called providers simply wont talk – i.e. connect - to each other. It’s simply another Nigerian rip-off.
My good friend, Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel, is the owner of a ‘high-end’ cellular of Finnish origin, which somebody has given to him, and which allows him to communicate with ’no holds barred’. And that thing keeps ringing, peeping endlessly, as we travel to his village to inspect his country-home, almost totally restored after the damage wrought on it by the hordes of the late dictator, Sanni Abacha.
And again the ‘writer’ is also the ‘fighter’, as the Nobel spokesman described him in the award ceremony in 1986.
Nowadays Wole fights – amongst others – the ’boy from his own village’ of Abeokuta, a certain Olusegun Obasanjo, who mutated from ‘soldier boy’ to civilian president some years ago. At the time, Obasanjo was trying to prolong his stay in power beyond the two terms allowed by the Nigerian consitution. And not only that! It seems that ‘Uncle Sege’ employs several people in the capital Abuja, studiously collecting all sorts of laudatory newspaper clippings in pursuit of his eventual candidature as the successor to a certain Kofi Annan! Now, for some years Wole has been very active within PRONACO, an assembly of Nigerian democrats trying to convene a national convention to work out a new consitution and a general political outline for Africa’s most populous country – Nigeria. Being the true nationalists they are, Wole and his political friends do NOT want to limit their activity to the south of
the country. They want to be active also in the so-called (and wrongly-called) ‘Muslim’ north where – in spite of ‘Sharia-isation’ – PRONACO has a number of courageous and outspoken sympathisers.
But while we were travelling to Abeokuta, the so-called ’popular soul’ was boiling in reaction to the Danish Muhammad cartoons – which nobody had even seen! That soul, in fact, is being heated up in an orchestrated fashion by those already campaigning for the 2007 Nigerian presidential election. And not only in the always hot Maiduguri metropolis near Lake Chad, but also in other Northern cities. There the first riots had already claimed dozens if not hundreds of lives.
And now Wole’s cellular is ringing non-stop. Text messages are coming in in a constant stream. A first and then a second tell Wole that ‘there have been riots in the Northern city of Kano as well, and that therefore PRONACO had better cancel its proposed national meeting there.’
Wole doesn’t trust that text. He rings a friend in Kano who confirms that ‘all is quiet’.
But somebody keeps bombarding Wole with ‘news’ of dramatic events in Kano. Wole takes refuge in a scheme: “You know, there is an anonymous fellow who for days has been bombarding me with that kind of message. Now you must help me. You call that guy, tell him your name is Tim Smith, that you keep getting those messages, and you don’t know why YOU are getting those messages. Evidently those messages are meant for somebody else, but WHO?”
I ring the given number, present myself as TIM SMITH, ask the guy why he “keeps pestering me with those messages, which are meant for WHOM, really?”
The guy at the other end doesn’t want to give his name, but does eventually admit that the messages are meant for ’a certain Prof’ (Soyinka is normally known as ‘The Prof’), ‘whom you may NOT know.’
I answer: ‘But that’s not my number! The number you have been calling is simply wrong, and wherefrom did you get that number in the first place?’
Answer: ‘From a concerned person… who gave me the Prof’s number.’
Me again: ‘I repeat: you got the wrong number, and could you, please, stop calling that number!’
I hang up, sigh deeply, and then Wole: ’Well done, brother! Let’s see whether this nonsense will now stop.’
One of these days when we meet again I will have to ask Wole if ‘this nonsense’ DID in fact stop after that cellular conversation...
The fact is that after decades of being ‘incommunicado’, Nigerians are now communicating wildly day and night. It has been made possible mainly thanks to aggressive marketing by a South African telecom company in Nigeria. Now this technological leap has a number of advantages, the main one being that you don’t have to travel – if you can at all – in the immense Lagos megalopolis of some 16 million inhabitants with its hour-long go-slows. In the olden days you tried to go for a meeting, and not infrequently you ended up doing a 180-degree turn after being stuck in a jam for hours, and the meeting never took place.
Nowadays you simply use the cellular to call or to send a text – it was Nigerian friends who taught the author of these lines how to use that technology! Result: traffic has decreased by the factor x in Lagos. The traffic almost flows.
But there are also obvious disadvantages to the new technology: in Nigeria, just as in Ramallah, Gaza, Kabul or Djakarta, this new, cheap and really functioning technology (or should it be technique?) is being used daily by ‘concerned persons’ to heat up an already ‘loaded’ atmosphere, and it really needs the cool attitude and tricky cleverness of a ‘Prof.’ to counter those nefarious attempts – even if only partially.
....
And an aside… or addendum…
Cards to get your cellular working are being hawked around on all Lagos roads and even in the villages. Just like in ‘my village’, Odogbolu. Sales are brisk. But in my village, one roadside shop-owner wanted to be on the safe side: he was not only offering charge cards for cellulars but also offered locally produced ‘Honey and Carrots’ (picture available!).
For the time being, those cards are still coming from Europe or South Africa, but another Nigerian friend of mine has already read the sign of the modern communication times. Whereas his father made his fortune by printing bibles, school books and calendars, the clever son has just built a huge new high-security block with huge metal doors and high walls, spiked with barbed wire and dotted all over with closed-circuit TV cameras. Very soon B. will start printing those cards for cellular phones. It’s just like printing money.
Which is the reason why he has already engaged a private security service.
For the running of his printing press, B. has already engaged a technician from India. But he also needed, so he said, ‘an expert from Germany’, and had almost found one. ‘But’, he said, ‘when the guy heard that his place of work would be Lagos, Nigeria he hesitated – and insisted on my doubling his salary.’
B. has promised to let me know whether ‘my countryman’ did after all agree to work in Lagos. And, he added, ‘Once the printing press has started rolling I will finally grant myself a much-deserved holiday in the German Black Forest. I do after all need that German guy, although I no longer purchase my machines in Germany, as my Dad used to do. That’s much easier in Dubai these days!’
And so here goes ‘Globalisation’…
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