Ayodeji Mohammed (not her real name) is one of Nigeria’s youths trying to find remote jobs outside the shore of Nigeria. In April, she came across a remote job vacancy on Facebook. But she did not apply because part of the requirements for the job was a 15 megabytes per second connection at the least. This was not good news for her.
Her neighbourhood in which she lived in Abuja suffered from poor connectivity regardless of the network provider that is being used. She told this newspaper that she wished this was not the case but that poor connectivity was a reality she had to live with. She said, “Poor network is like our thing in Nigeria. I did not want to go through all that stress just to be denied because of bad network. They asked for it clearly in their requirements so I just let it pass.” Mohammed is not alone. In March 2021, a Nigerian Twitter user named Oluwatobi shared his experience during a job recruitment exercise where he was rejected because of the poor internet connectivity in Nigeria. His tweet gathered a number of reactions and was retweeted 473 times with most agreeing to this and sharing similar experiences. A particular reply to his tweet stated, “Nigeria doesn’t want you to win.”
Poor network connectivity in Nigeria is an issue that has been revisited and discussed extensively at informal settings but has been paid little attention to by governing bodies and the government as a whole. A look through the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), an agency tasked with regulating the operations of telecommunications companies in the country, will show that the last date customer complaints were recorded was almost four years ago on October 1, 2017. But internet connection is not the only problem faced in the communications sphere. Chioma Nworie, another Abuja resident and customer of MTN services complained that phone calls were quite difficult to make in her neighbourhood since it was prone to dropping. She usually has to make calls when she is away from home or through WhatsApp.
Deborah Bawa, who also lives in Abuja and also uses MTN complained of slow internet connection while Sharon Oyelakin, a resident of Niger State, said that MTN usually sent her messages that her data plan was finished even when it was not and after the message, her connection would go off. Victor Egwebe, an Airtel subscriber who lives in Awka, Anambra said he did not understand how he could live in the state capital and his network fluctuated with call dropping problems regular. Ayomaria Adesua who is a resident of Ekiti State said that he used the services of Globacom and MTN interchangeably depending on his location. “It depends on the location. For example, at the office, the location favours Glo and that is what I am using.
When I go home, I have to switch to MTN. Major network providers have to work on improved coverage. It is a big issue,” Adesua said. He also said that it seemed network providers spent more on advertisements than on coverage.