In this paper, I explore what might be called actually existing civil society, 1 exemplified here through a boycott of mobile telephone services on Friday 19 September 2003 by subscribers in Nigeria. Although the boycott went largely unreported in the Western media, it remains, for many reasons, a milestone in the development of oppositional culture in the country.
The first reason is the emergence in Nigeria of the use of modern technology as a tool for democratic activism and consolidation. The boycott consolidates the democratic opposition’s previous use of radio technology (Adebanwi, 2001) to generally mobilise against military rule in the country. Second, ‘9/19’ (as it was called in the local press) arguably embodies a new imaginary of popular dissent; in particular, the potential for the mobile telephone to open new vistas in citizens’ agitation for both economic and political self-determination in the country. What this means is that while the boycott at issue was specifically targeted at the mobile telephone companies, it was at the same time much more than that. In a sense, the boycott itself encapsulates a long-standing feud between citizens-as-customers and business corporations in Nigeria (witness for example the yet unresolved saga in the oil ‘producing’ Niger Delta),2 and between the same citizens-as-consumers and the Nigerian state. Indeed, the majority of consumers who took part in the protest saw it as a continuation of the larger project of righting wrongs.3 The following statement by the Chairman of the Unofficial Consumers’ Protection Agency (UCPA), Ojemaye Otitoka is an excellent illustration of this position:
This is the spirit of this campaign. This is the real force behind its eventual success, the spirit of the Nigerian people who are speaking up for themselves finally. Now we are crying against exorbitant GSM (Global Standard for Mobile Communications) tariffs. Tomorrow, using the same methods we will complain about other things 4 (emphases added).
The paper is divided into seven sections. In what follows, I look at what might be called the continuing ‘dialogue’ between technology and society, focusing in particular on the democratic potential of new technologies. This is followed by a historical analysis of the telephone and state power in Nigeria. This section also describes how the telephone has been an index of social stratification. The fourth section traces the global emergence of GSM telephony, while also considering the various factors crucial to the emergence of a mobile culture. At the heart of the paper is the mass switch-off by the subscribers on 19 September 2003. In the fifth section, the paper builds up to that momentous event by looking at the introduction of GSM telephony in Nigeria. The coming of GSM telephony was certain to ruffle the social matter, and in no time, subscribers were pitted against the GSM companies (see below) who appeared solely interested in profit. This section describes in detail the particulars of that ‘encounter’. This is followed in the sixth section by a description of the boycott proper, including an analysis of its fallouts both for its organisers and the GSM companies. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of mobile technology for civil society, in particular its relationship with the Nigerian state. Although it concedes that mobile telephony has radically transformed the Nigerian social landscape, evidently giving civil society a new cause and platform for mobilisation, the paper is dubious about the ultimate potential of mobile telephony for social organising.
Technology, the state & democratic activism
The literature often describes a ‘digital divide’ – the gap in technological penetration of society between the global North and South, or more obviously between Western Europe and the United States, and the rest of the world (Thompson, 2004; Yau, 2004; Main, 2001). For Castells, the clearest marker of the difference that exists between the two digitally bifurcated worlds is that while one part may be appropriately described as comprising ‘informational societies’, the other part may not.6 If this stratification is accepted – and it seems largely valid – then a clear majority of African countries are not yet informational societies.
This position is supported by pertinent statistics. For instance, according to the United Nations Development Programme' (UNDP) Technology Achievement Index (TAI) which ‘aims to capture how well a country is creating and diffusing technology and building a human skill base-reflecting capacity to participate in the technological innovations of the network age’ (UNDP, 2001, quoted in Kuvaja and Mursu, 2003:46) most African and other developing countries are still at a rudimentary stage when it comes to using technology (Yau, 2003; Williams, 2004; Cogburn and Adeya, 1999; De Alcantara, 2002). For instance, although its share of global population is about 13 per cent, ‘the continent accounts for only a paltry 0.22 per cent of the total number of landline telephone connections in the world, and less than 2 per cent of global PC ownership’ (Yau, 2004:14). In general, African countries are consumers as opposed to producers of information and communications technologies (ICTs) (Powell, 2001), and successive African leaders have regarded telecommunications technology with suspicion at best, and hostility at worst.
Two quick examples from Nigeria will suffice. At the height of the opposition to the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–1998) in 1996, the regime’s National Security Adviser, Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo, obviously worried by the speed at which knowledge of the internet was spreading among the youthful segment of the Nigerian society, publicly contemplated banning the internet or at least blocking popular access to it.7 The same regime closed down the many telephone and related Information Technology (IT) centres which had mushroomed in different parts of the country. The General's action was widely interpreted as an attempt to asphyxiate civil society by denying it the critical oxygen of information and communication.
Technology, in particular telecommunications technology, has therefore become a crucial site in the perennial struggle to assert state power. It is hardly coincidental that the introduction of mobile telephony in a country like Nigeria has come with the return to civilian rule in May 1999. The truth is that military regimes, with their pathological obsession with dominating the public space, will never voluntarily cede space to contrary social forces; technological liberalisation is seen as threat.
The state plays more than a marginal role in technology development in general, whether we are talking about its innovation, policy, or guidelines for its use. Castells has divided the impact of the state in relation to technology into two, what we might call that of enhancement and stagnation, although a more careful reading would suggest that the relationship between technology, the state and society is actually a dialectical one. While the state tends to overdetermine the use of technology by society, telecommunications technology is seized for various kinds of political agenda, ranging from the progressive, social justice, ‘Seattle’-type, to the activities of terrorists acting against the modern liberal state.
The dialectic between technology and society seems, therefore, bound to result in unanticipated consequences. Across contemporary Africa, telecommunications technology, most especially mobile technology, is beginning to establish a huge impact on the social landscape. For example, studies by Tall (2004), Gueye (2003) and Paye (2002) respectively have documented how new information and communication technologies have overhauled diasporic relations and the entire democratic process in Senegal.
If the impact of technology on some aspects of social life is uncertain, the consequences for politics, especially democratic activism, are contested by scholars. Many remain sceptical about the democratic potential of new technologies, particularly media technologies. Most important, many doubt whether any real changes are possible at all without a shift in the long-standing global North-South imbalance (Cline-Cole and Powell, 2004; Hall, 1999). For Ake (2000), the public sphere brought into being by information technologies has hardly any boundaries, is too fluid, and too amorphous to elicit a sense of sharing in a social entity or to nurture political projects and democratic activism. Kroker and Weinstein (2000) agree, arguing that the new information superhighway ‘kills human agency and renders economic justice, democratic discourse, social solidarity and creativity obsolete’ (quoted in Adebanwi, 2001).
Other scholars seem more optimistic,8 insisting that ‘communities built inside machines or on air can be used to improve the ones outside of them’ (Rheingold, 2003). Pertierra (2002) argues, for example, that mobile phones, through texting, have provided people with ‘more freedom to express themselves in a strictly defined cultural environment’ (2002:8). For Finqualievich (2001), new media technologies undergird the emergent concept of electronic democracy, essentially ‘the increasing use of telecommunications technology to strengthen transparency, intra- and inter-organisational communication and public participation in governance’ (see Kuvaja and Mursu, 2003:18). According to him, electronic democracy transcends merely making information available on the net. Rather, it is about ‘changing management and organisation structures to enable citizens’ participation and access to information’ (Ibid.).
Recently, the optimists’ case has been buoyed by the role that new media technologies have played in global political transformations, especially in the developing world, a good example being the ‘coup de text’, which culminated in the ousting of President Joseph Estrada in the Philippines in January 2001. There is little doubt that the more than 100 million texts that Filipinos exchanged daily (Agar, 2003:109) were significant in the process of mobilisation against the presidency. Rafael (2003) has argued that the insurrection was ultimately not about people power but in reality a reflection of the middle class’s influence and power of manipulation. Could this also be true of the Nigerian boycott? The ousting of Estrada is frequently cited as a crucial milestone in the use of technology for the purposes of social advocacy. More important, it has continued to inspire embattled groups elsewhere.
In the run up to the 19 September 2003 boycott in Nigeria, it was common to hear aggrieved subscribers argue that ‘if it succeeded in Argentina and the Philippines, it will succeed in Nigeria.’ The immediate object of the protest in Nigeria, it must be said, differed in form from that in the Philippines: while one was about using the boycott to force the phone companies to, among other things, reduce tariffs and provide better services, the other concerned using the mobile phone as a tool for political overhauling and regime change. Nevertheless, they were ultimately similar to the extent that the Nigerian boycott was not about the GSM companies alone but, it is argued, also about the totality of the rest of society in relation to the Nigerian state and economy.
New technologies of communication, in particular mobile telephones, appear to expand the existing territory of public expression. This expansion is important for African countries and the developing world where decades of autocracy have led to the progressive stagnation of the public sphere. Restriction of the expansion of new technologies may also energise civil society by critically complementing the raft of issues around which it has usually organised. In this way, they generate a reason for, as well as a means of, social democratic activism. Whether they are ultimately useful in reformulating the existing principles of social relations remains, of course, a moot point.
Schmidtke (1998) has advanced four related theses on the relationship of new technologies to collective action and political mobilisation. According to him, new technologies reduce costs for collective action, reduce individuals’ costs for engagement and participation, intensify the actors’ sense of engagement, and facilitate the formation of collective identity. While this may indeed be the case, how this plays out rests squarely on the immediate socio-political environment in which technology and society interact. As Schmidtke himself has warned, at the end of the day, it is not the medium, but the social and political context that determines the contours of subsequent events. Or, as Cline-Cole and Powell have noted,
The key issues, therefore, must be seen as revolving around who uses the technology, how the technology is used, and to what end it is used (Cline-Cole and Powell, 2004:5).
The telephone & state power in Nigeria
The telephone has been central to the projection of state power in Nigeria. Crucially, it has also been a strong element in social stratification as the possession of a telephone was supposed to be an index of where one belonged on the social ladder. According to one newspaper commentator:
in Nigeria, such amenities that have long been taken for granted as essential to modern living were preserved as status symbols. Public monopolies like NITEL (Nigerian Telecommunications Limited) were nursed at taxpayers’ great expense in furtherance of the trend (Nnanna 2003).
Prior to the introduction of GSM technology in the country in 2001, Nigeria was a virtual telecommunications desert. Pre-GSM, Nigeria ranked globally as the third from the bottom in teledensity (average number of telephones per thousand population) after Afghanistan and Mongolia (Oparah, 2003). Although the first telephone call in the country was made in 1901, up until a century later in 2001, Nigeria, with a population of 88 million (according to the disputed 1991 national population census) could only boast a total of 450,000 lines. A majority of these lines were provided by the state-owned Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and a handful of private telecommunications operators (PTOs). Nevertheless, services were invariably abysmal, and NITEL soon joined the National Electric Power Authority in the popular imagination as a spineless bureaucracy (Olukoju, 2004).
In addition, the structure of ownership of the existing lines seems to lend credence to the point made earlier about the telephone as a class marker or social delineator. The 450,000 odd lines were in the hands of less than 90,000 individuals and corporate organisations, many of which had more than 50 lines on their switchboards (Oparah, 2003). Furthermore, as telephones were intimately connected to social standing, new lines were almost impossible to acquire. The waiting time for a new telephone line was somewhere between 8 and 10 years, while the cost (minus installation charges) was about N80,000 (about $800).9 This, at a time when the average annual salary in the country was less than N40,000 (about $400).
Instructively, however, the issue of telecommunications, particularly of telephones, never disappeared from public discourse. Indeed, if anything, other developments in the larger society made its continuous debate imperative. One was the quantum leap in the number of citizens who were compelled by the prevailing economic situation to emigrate from the country. As this diaspora swelled, so did its needs, particularly those related to communication. This, among other factors connected to the impact of globalisation on the domestic economy served to put telecommunica-tions issues on the front burner of public debate. As a result, successive governments felt compelled to pay lip service to the idea despite their apparent insincerity. For example, a core component of President Ibrahim Babangida’s otherwise garbled strategy of economic deregulation (Olukoshi, 1993; Biersteker and Lewis, 1996) was a national telecommunications policy.
Indeed, a decree regulating the activities of the GSM companies was promulgated as far back as 1992.10 However, the policy did not come to fruition under General Ibrahim Babangida and his immediate successor did not fare any better. When General Sani Abacha took over in 1994, he tried to hijack the benefits of the privatisation and commercialisation, particularly those of mobile telephone services. He even created his own cell phone company.
His own idea was to frustrate other prospective investors out of the market and use his own local and foreign fronts to place his outfit, TELECEL, in the controlling and dominant position (Nnanna, 2003).
Upon being sworn in on 29 May 1999, one of the first acts of the current president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was to suspend all telecommunications licences issued by the previous regime, especially those meant for mobile access. He then set up a panel under an industry chieftain, Christopher Kolade, to audit and reassess all the licences, at the end of which nearly all of them were cancelled. The next section focuses on the coming of GSM telephony in Nigeria, placing it in the context of the global increase in the number of mobile phone users, and the rapid evolution of a mobile culture.
The coming of GSM telephony
Having wiped the board virtually clean, the president decided to make public the process of issuing licences to operators. This was in line with the radical glasnost that the newly elected regime was trying to promote in a telecommunications market that had witnessed many profound changes over the previous decade and had in the process become quite competitive.
Cellular telephony was born in the United States, but credit for the simplification of its previously complicated technology is given to the Nordic countries from where it spread to the rest of Europe. GSM was inevitably inserted into the specific politics of the societies where the technology was either developed or refined. For instance, one reason why mobile technology diffused with ease throughout continental Europe was because, in the words of Agar (2003):
the European Commission, the civil service of the European project, had seen in GSM a political tool of immense value: telecommunications – and particularly GSM – would provide the infrastructure of a Europe ready to mount a convincing economic challenge to the US and Japan, and a pan-European telecoms network would encourage organisations to think European (pp. 60–61).
Many factors were responsible for this sudden explosion in the number of mobile phone subscribers and the evolution of what we might call a mobile culture. The first was cost. As the knowledge of mobile technology grew and dispersed, so did the price of the average phone fall (Ashurst, 2004). As the prices fell, the ‘continuous miniaturisation of components’ (Agar, 2003:8) which had been a feature of electrical technology, ensured that the phones were increasingly lighter and more portable. By the year 2002, global subscriptions to cellular phones were reported to have exceeded the one billion mark (Agar, 2003:5), although this should not be allowed to occlude the evident disparity in consumption between the global North and South. In 2001, for example, ‘65 per cent of the world population had no access to telephone and ICTs’ and Manhattan and Tokyo each has more telephone lines than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined (Ishemo, 2004:72).
In addition to declining cost (and user-friendliness), other factors made the mobile phone a hit with the consuming public. One of these was symbolic, having to do with the way in which the mobile phone is rooted in the affirmations and processes of the modern self (Myerson, 2001). Perhaps it is more than a coincidence that the mobile phone has become popular in an age which has become obsessed with individuality and assertion of personal freedoms. There is something essentially liberating about owning a mobile phone. For the owner, the mobile phone performs a myriad of ‘miracles’, central among which are the ability to be multi-locational or trans-locational. As the networks connecting people in the global village become denser, so also does the need for communication increase. One important dimension of this communicative necessity is the capacity to send messages in ‘text’ form.11 Indeed, one might argue that this is the main reason behind the global popularity of mobile phones.
Which is not to say that texting does not have its own social drawbacks. Much has been said for example about its perceived tendency to ‘disrupt protocols of recognition and accountability’ (Ibid, p. 408). Arguably the potential to bypass, negate, subvert, undermine, antagonise, or even complement the state, as the case may be, is encoded into the very ontology of the mobile phone, as it has acquired its global popularity.
This was the global state of affairs when Nigeria began its journey to licence GSM operators in 2001. True to its earlier promise, the federal government threw open the auctioning process for four mobile licences in January 2001. Each licence was auctioned for a whopping $285m,12 and by August 2001, three of the GSM operators had begun operations. These were the Zimbabwean-owned Econet Wireless Nigeria Limited,13 the South-African-owned MTN Limited, and the state-owned NITEL. So popular did mobile technology become, that within a few months, the companies had exceeded their highest expectations. Initially, they had been sceptical about investing in the Nigerian economy, because of its perceived volatility and the country’s history of political instability. At the same time, they were unsure about the purchasing power of potential customers.
These fears were to give way to boundless optimism after a few months. For example, by 30 September 2003, MTN could boast in excess of 1.3 million subscribers while its rival, Econet, had more than 850,000. Within the same period, both companies combined had spread their coverage to more than 1,600 cities (Aragba-Akpore, 2003; Otuya, 2003). Within 24 months, with new investments put at $3.8 billion (about N600 billion) and a teledensity of 2.6 telephone lines to 100 inhabitants, Nigeria’s telecommunications sector was rated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as the fastest growing in Africa (Ibid.). The sudden explosion of GSM in Nigeria was part of a continent-wide momentum.
95.61 per cent of African users of telephones use GSM. Over the past two years, there has been a 101.85 per cent growth of GSM users in Africa, as opposed to a growth rate of 52.49 per cent globally. Vodacom, the biggest African network, has over 7.5 million subscribers, while the total number of African subscribers (all technologies) is 34.3 million. The biggest market is in South Africa with 14.4 million users. This is expected to grow to 19 million by 2006 (Ashurst, 2004:20).
The unexpectedly high number of users naturally translated into profits for the companies. In its first year of operation, MTN declared a pre-tax profit of N11 billion (Daily Times, 11 August 2003:10). Naturally, with these profits came certain expectations, especially regarding the quality of services rendered by the GSM companies. Many consumers believed that the companies were simply not doing enough, preferring to cash in on an unsuspecting public to the detriment of good service. The companies disagreed, insisting that they were doing enough within the specific limitations of the Nigerian environment. The following section is devoted to an examination of these claims and counter-claims, as well as the concerted mobilisation for a mass switch-off by various consumer groups.
Subscribers vs. GSM companies: between service & profit
It is true that what works elsewhere doesn’t necessarily work in Nigeria. Elsewhere in the world, GSM services are not burdened by the kind of poor quality that afflicts Nigerian subscribers … The question of network overload nonsense does not arise (Kingsley Osadolor, 2003; The Guardian, 23 September 2003).
The disenchantment must be seen against the background of common expectations following Nigeria’s return to civil rule in 1999 after 16 years of military rule. Among many anticipated ‘dividends of democracy’, the coming of mobile telephony was expected to signal a radical improvement in the common lot. At the very least, mobile telecommunication was expected to accomplish some of the ‘miracles’ associated with its introduction in other parts of the world, for instance, ‘abolishing’ distance by facilitating the conduct of business and interpersonal relations. Behind this, arguably, was the ‘telecommunicative fantasy’ (Rafael, 2003) of using the mobile telephone as a means of asserting a new collective identities, remodelling the terms of engagement with the state, and, above all, seeking and achieving social parity with the ruling class which had jealously monopolised communications technology for so long.
It was the inadequacy of the services provided that fuelled the social anger which culminated in the boycott of 19 September 2003. Allied to this was the perceived failure of the state, through the state-established National Communications Commission (NCC), to call the telephone companies to order and impose sanctions as and when necessary. It was even felt in some cases that the companies operated in cahoots with the federal authorities, a factor which made them largely impervious to the agitation of the larger public. Many people were eager to draw parallels between the activities of the phone companies and those of oil companies in the oil ‘producing’ areas which were similarly notorious for conniving with the state to undermine the interests of the Nigerian public (Frynas, 1998). This seems to support the radical left view of multinationals as agents of globalisation within a skewed neo-liberal order (Bracking and Harrison, 2003; Mohan and Zack-Williams, 1995).
The subscribers’ case may be categorised in terms of complaints and demands. The basic complaints centred on the following: arbitrary reduction of credits, uncom-pleted calls, poor signals (otherwise known as ‘no network coverage’ or ‘network busy’), service breakage, constant changes in contract terms, ‘usurious’ tariffs (believed to be among the highest, if not actually the highest, in the world), misleading advertisements on new services, oversubscribed networks, problem of interconnectivity among networks,14 unsolicited diversion of calls, text message failures, artificial scarcity of recharge cards, and surcharging of undelivered text messages.
To ameliorate this situation, the subscribers advocated the reduction of call tariffs to N20 (as opposed to N50) per call per minute across the board, reduction of SIM packs to N5,000 across the aboard, immediate implementation of the per second-billing system (as opposed to per minute-billing) by all operators, free SMS service by all operators, free calls during weekends and off-peak periods, zero payment for all terminated and dropped calls, indefinite access (as opposed to limited but renewable access period) to the GSM network for all subscribers, immediate interconnection by all GSM operators, private telecommunication operators and NITEL, and cancellation of compulsory expiry dates for recharge cards.
From early 2002, these complaints and proposals circulated among subscribers and the wider public through mere word-of-mouth, text messages, phone calls and letters and articles in the print media. The first concrete initiative was a decision by Dr. Deolu Ogunbanjo and Prince Bayo Omotubora to instigate legal action against the two then operating companies, MTN and Econet. This was on 8 March 2002, a date that, in retrospect, becomes symbolic for the formation of the pioneer organisation to champion the cause of mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria – the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS). In the words of Dr. Ogunbanjo himself,
It started when we sued MTN and ECONET last year … it was after the first hearing that we knew how much suffering Nigerian GSM users were going through. When we got out of the court so many people just surrounded us. It was a large crowd and that was where NATCOMS was formed (see The Guardian, 12 November 2003).
While NATCOMS took the legal route, these associations spearheaded a popular campaign to prosecute and defeat the phone companies in the court of public opinion. To complement the strategies listed earlier, they also distributed posters and leaflets and made a representation to the National Assembly where they thought they could count on some sympathetic ears (Osuagwu, 2003).
But it was the role of the media in the articulation of the demands that was to prove crucial in the process, thereby helping us to see the media itself in the context of the prevailing economic and social circumstances. The initial message of the protesters was circulated by text and it read, in part:
From 7 to 14 September 2003, switch off your GSM handsets between 10 a.m. and 12 noon daily. Do you know that the GSM charge of N50 per minute is the highest in the world? In the US, a minute is N20, in Europe N23, in China N18, in South Africa N22 and in Ghana N23. Why N50 in Nigeria? This is a rip off! (Do not believe their story that they pay more for diesel in Nigeria). Right now GSM operators in the UK are about to further reduce charges on airtimes. 15
While protesting subscribers limited themselves to writing letters to the editors and direct articles, the companies actively courted the media. One example of this determined courtship was the decision by the companies to give free handsets and lines to senior editors of media organisations.17 This was complemented by the huge numbers of advertisements which the companies paid to be published in different newspapers. These two factors made the phone companies briefly popular with the media.
In addition, contrary to the earlier call to action (see above) which demanded that subscribers switch off for two hours everyday between 7 and 14 September, the latter text was simple and canvassed a one-day boycott. The message read thus:
Let’s force GSM tariffs down. Join a mass protest switch off ur fone on fri sept 19 ’03. They’ll lose millions. It worked in US & Argentina. Spread Dis txt.
If anything is clear from the discussion thus far, it is that the protesters did not have a monopoly of the public ear. The service providers, if we can call them that in the light of the quality of delivery issues raised by the subscribers, also put their own case across as vigorously as possible. In a curious convergence with some of the claims made by the protesters, the companies also blamed factors integral to the Nigerian state and social environment for their alleged poor services. The easiest target was electricity, the erratic supply of which they blamed for their failure to guarantee reliable signals to their customers. The MTN claimed for instance that due to frequent power cuts, it used over a million litres of diesel a day to power generators at its installations across the country. The same situation apparently also applies to Econet for which the unreliability of power supply, according to Emeka Oparah, its Head of Corporate Affairs, means, for example, that while a base station costs US$250,000 in South Africa, the same facility goes for US$375,000 in Nigeria because it has to be reconfigured to make it compatible with the erratic power supply in Nigeria (Oparah, 2003).
As a result, the GSM companies argue, rather than castigate them for charging exorbitant tariffs for their products, subscribers ought to appreciate the unique constraints imposed by the Nigerian socio-political environment. Some of these constraints include the $285 million paid for licences which the companies claimed were among the highest in the world, and the failure of the federal government to channel the same money into developing necessary infrastructure as earlier promised,18 the huge investments in hiring private security services to protect staff and equipment; and the large sums paid out as ransom to liberate kidnapped staff and/or protect installations from damage by social miscreants, known in Nigerian parlance as ‘Area Boys’ (Herault and Adesanmi, 1997).
Other social constraints which, according to the companies, justified the allegedly high tariffs imposed for services are: the relatively low earnings of Nigerian consumers and the hugely unfavourable exchange rate of the Nigerian Naira to the dollar in a dollar-denominated market; the dependence of the companies on expatriate staff who are necessarily remunerated in hard currency; and the dearth of well-trained Nigerian personnel and the attendant huge corporate investment in the training of new recruits. Finally, the service providers also alleged other hidden cost elements in the provision of GSM services which seemed to justify the allegedly high tariffs. These include connection costs, overheads, taxes and levies, interest charges and amortisation on leased facilities (Oparah, 2003).
The majority of subscribers did not seem to have been impressed by these arguments, saying that as the GSM companies knew well in advance of the vagaries of the Nigerian socio-economic environment, they could not use the same environment as an excuse to either charge high tariffs or justify poor services. In any case, the subscribers were convinced that the companies might have decided to invest in the Nigerian telecommunications industry because of the same environmental limita-tions, given the scope it is known to provide for corporate profiteering. They argue that it is because the companies were in cahoots with the National Communications Commission (NCC), for example, that they persistently got away with their embarrassing services, and that they were only out to profit from customers.
The GSM companies’ case was not helped by revelations in the media about repatriation of their profits. The Central Bank of Nigeria expressed concern that the companies’ cash flow is not usually allowed to stay for more than a few weeks in Nigerian banks before being converted to foreign exchange for one purchase or the other, thus reinforcing the worry that they may only be contributing to the cost of turnover (COT) of the banks rather than the overall economy (see ThisDay, 6 August 2003). This was the evidence many needed to confirm their suspicion that the companies were more interested in profit than in service to their customers. In the next section, I describe the boycott itself and also examine both its immediate impact on the GSM companies and the demands of the subscribers.
The boycott & its aftermath
This was the situation in the period leading up to the September 19 boycott. According to the organisers of the protest, an estimated 75 per cent of mobile phone users switched off their phones on that day19 in apparent compliance with the boycott call, a claim which, if true, would have led to the companies losing millions of Naira.
The companies themselves admitted that a substantial number of customers actually switched off their phones, but insisted that this was fewer than the 75 per cent claimed by the protesters (Eke, 2003). A number of high profile individuals joined the protesters, thus giving their case publicity, as well as a certain moral validation. Two examples are Gani Fawehinmi, a lawyer and social justice crusader, and former external affairs minister, Bolaji Akinyemi. The public attitude towards the boycott was mixed. Although the print media generally recorded a simple victory for the protesters, it was also apparent that a significant number of people had decided not to obey the boycott for many reasons, including the possible loss of crucial business contacts and scepticism about the possibility of the boycott to achieve the intended ends.
But no one could doubt the dent that the boycott and the fractious debate leading to it had left on the corporate image of the GSM companies, and this, it seems, was more satisfying to the protesters. This perception was confirmed when, in the weeks following the boycott, the companies embarked on a charm offensive intended to win back the larger public and disaffected customers. For example, both MTN and Econet vigorously renewed their commitment to ‘corporate social responsibility’ by promoting a number of high profile social causes. Both, especially MTN, have become visible in the sporting and educational arenas, and MTN’s Book Aid Programme is promoted in the media as its own contribution to Nigeria’s search for quality education.20
For its part, Globacom, the indigenous-owned corporation which began operations in August 2003 has made a considerable impact in the promotion of soccer. It sponsors the premier division of the national soccer league which has since been renamed the NFA Globacom Premiership, and was a constant presence in the media in January 2004 when Nigeria settled for a bronze medal in the 24th edition of the African Cup of Nations football tournament. Many supporters who made it to Tunisia, the venue of the tournament, to cheer on the national soccer team, did so thanks to sponsorship from the company.21
The protesters could also point to a few other concrete gains. The major one perhaps is the introduction of per second billing (PSB) as opposed to per minute billing (PMB). Subscribers had complained about this, as it meant that they automatically had to pay for the whole of the next minute for calls that exceeded the previous minute even by a second. The excuse of the subscribers had been that it was impossible to offer customers per second billing until they attained ‘reasonable maturity’ or at least three years after the commencement of operations. However, following the boycott and the introduction of Globacom22 which gave its customers the per second billing option on 29 August 2003, Econet and MTN had no choice but to follow suit. Yet, they did not do this without attempting to claw something back – subscribers who opted to be billed on the PSB platform were made to pay a switch-over fee of N300 each (Oluseitan, 2003).
In addition, in an apparent attempt to recoup some of the money they lost in making the PSB platform available to interested customers, both MTN and Econet started charging specified amounts for a range of services that were previously free. For example, access to the MTN customer service centre and the customer’s account balance (which used to be free) now attracted N6 per minute or 6kobo per second. To further assuage disgruntled customers, MTN also offered 100 free texts many of which, ironically, did not reach their destinations. One other seemingly positive fallout of the boycott could be noticed in the increased determination of the Ernest Ndukwe-led National Communications Commission (NCC) to ensure that the compliance of the service providers with the industry’s basic regulations. To this end, it introduced the idea of establishing a Consumer Arbitration Panel in each of the 36 states of the country to listen to the grievances of subscribers and arbitrate where possible in disagreements between them and the GSM companies. In addition, the NCC issued a firm deadline on interconnectivity to the companies, although as at the time of writing, the companies were yet to comply despite repeated calls and new deadlines.23 The process leading to the boycott also called official attention to the plight of consumers, and it is on record that on at least two occasions, the senior officials of both MTN and Econet were invited to the federal capital in Abuja to defend themselves. They were also made to appear before the Senate Committee on Commerce and Communications for the same purpose. The concluding section examines arising issues in the (mobile) technology-civil society-state interface.
Conclusion: mobile technology, civil society & the state
GSM phones are a great blessing in our lives … These new phones provide direct personal contact. We relate to them in a private manner. GSM phones have similarly reduced the distances in our lives (Reuben Abati, ‘How Did We Live Without GSM?’, The Guardian on Sunday, 11 January 2004).
Religion was once known as the opium of the people … A new age has dawned with a new opium known as GSM. In this brave new world of capitalism and globalisation, GSM is the drug that lulled everybody into excited stupor. People are daily going broke in the name of making very expensive phone calls, but like all drug addicts kicking the habit is easier said than done (Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, ‘GSM as Opium of the People’, New Age, 16 September 2003).
Evidently, it has also given civil society, as understood in the paper, a new energy by providing a new cause around which to organise, and a new platform for challenging both statist and corporatist hegemonies. Furthermore, mobile telephony has come to manifest simultaneously as both the subject and instrument of agitation, lending a new dimension to the nature of the struggle for the public space in Nigeria. In this way, it ought to be noted that ‘9/19’ was symbolic both in the context of anti-corporatist politics in the country; and the use of technological means (the text message in particular) as a tool for attempting to right perceived wrongs in the domains of both politics and communications. How far this takes us on the road to an overhaul of broader national and global relations of domination remains, as previously stated, to be seen, especially as what civil society appeared to have challenged was the state and corporate hegemony, not the capitalist superstructure of which they are a part.
My analysis here also concerns the relationship between (mobile) technology and social democratic activism. On the surface, it would appear as though optimistic prognoses about the utility of mobile technology for social activism are ‘virtually’ justified. Through text messaging and concerted media mobilisation, the organisers of the ‘9/19’ boycott were able to call official and corporate attention to the challenges facing mobile telephone users. And while the protest did not bring down a government compared to its claimed contribution in the Philippines, it at least led to a number of decisions which partly redressed the situation of subscribers.
As in the Philippines, it could also be argued that the boycott showed up the very limitations of the use of technology for purposes of social activism. Rafael (2003) has noted that the Philippine protesters neither challenged the nature of the state nor all-important class divisions, and that eventually President Joseph Estrada was replaced by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, his Vice President and daughter of a previous president. In the case of the Nigerian boycott, it can also be said that, the GSM companies had the last word by taking back with one hand what they had given away with the other. But does this suggest that mobile technology is largely ineffectual as a political tool? The answer, a tentative one at that, is that it remains at best a double-edged tool. Instructively, in the Philippines, one of the first steps taken by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was to ban ‘malicious, profane, and obscene texts’ (Agar, 2003:109), a move which more than anything demonstrates her recognition of the potential power of text messaging.
As a means to mobilise political protest, mobile technology seems to be more effective when aligned with other instruments geared towards the same end. Its effectiveness is greatly determined by the prior strength and creativity of the social forces in whose hands it is a weapon. Technology (including mobile technology), it seems, does nothing on its own but is impacted by specific social conditions. To cite Agar’s observation about the Filipino experience, ‘mobile phones are moulded by the countries they are used in and give form to the nation in return’ (2003:110). Thus, for Nigeria, while mobile telephony has come to be seen as a veritable instrument of political struggle, its potential effectiveness is determined by the way in which it is used. And while it is definitely a welcome addition to the arsenal of anti-corporatist forces, it may not necessarily fulfil the fondest ‘telecommunicative fantasies’ about securing total victory in the quest for ‘class parity’ and social and economic justice.
Following Nigeria’s return to civil rule in May 1999, the activist landscape has been rapidly transformed due to the ‘defection’ of many influential figures to the state sector, a process which, many believe, has led to the relative emptying out and weakening of civil society.25 As part of the same process, many Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which had sprung up earlier to mobilise against military rule have sought to reinvent themselves, with many leaving Lagos (the former capital and heartland of civic and democratic activism) for Abuja, federal capital since 1991, to seek new opportunities. The short-term result of this process was to weaken civil society and expose it to the depredations of the state.
This was the state of affairs as agitation for the boycott gathered and spread, and it comes as no surprise that many of the public voices that had fallen relatively silent in the previous three years or so saw an opportunity to weigh in on behalf of the public and make themselves heard again. In this sense, the boycott could be said to have presented certain elements in civil society with both a new platform for mobilising as well as a welcome opportunity to re-charge itself.
Many associations sprang up in the heat of the moment to champion the cause of the protesters, but as we have noted earlier, the majority of them have since faded into oblivion, highlighting the critical need for organisational continuity on the part of civil society actors. A few of the organisations continued to pursue the judicial option. For example, on 23 November 2003, an Abuja Federal High Court granted a group, Nationwide, permission to sue the GSM companies for failure to connect their networks (Okenwa, 2003).
An additional point concerns the relationship between civil society and the state. The state was a constant presence in the process which I have outlined in this paper. It came under attack from civil society organisations and concerned citizens who believed that it had failed to take firm action against the erring telephone companies. Some went to the extent of accusing it of conspiracy with the service providers. The latter, for their part, blamed it for not providing adequate infrastructure (like regular electricity and security) that might have made life less difficult for them and easier to satisfy their customers. They also blamed it for not channelling the huge sums paid for licences into the development of required infrastructure for the communications industry.
In this regard, one contribution of this paper has been to pose the question of the extent to which the obvious failure of the Nigerian state to provide efficient telephony services is attributable to its familiar bureaucratic anaemia or, perhaps, a conscious class-oriented policy to starve civil society of a vital source of energy. What seems apparent, however, is how civil society itself requires a state that is efficient, transparent, firm, and able to enforce compliance with its wishes without degenerating into tyranny. Notably, the GSM companies failed to link up their trunks despite repeated calls from the federal authorities to do so. While it is not unknown for business concerns to try to maximise profit, experience shows that it usually takes the firmness and determination of the state to rein them in. However, in the case of Nigeria, or indeed the majority of African countries, the state and multinational corporations are often united by similar interests.
Lastly, it is also apparent that no matter how determined, civil society, ranged against the immense powers that huge business concerns are capable of mustering, cannot create the desired changes in society alone. It requires a strong state that is resolutely committed to the rule of law and to social transparency.
Finally, although ‘9/19’ may eventually go down in the annals as a landmark in the history of public agitation and customer-corporation relations in Nigeria, care should be taken not to exaggerate its symbolism. While, as shown here, the protest affords a more intimate view of ‘civil society’, corporations and the state in Nigeria, it remains an open question whether it takes us any further on the road to economic justice and/or social solidarity. For instance, the popularity and relative ‘accom-plishments’ of the protest notwithstanding, it emblemised the existing contradic-tions in the Nigerian civic sphere such as the relative ‘invisibility’ of women. Additionally, were the boycott to become a barometer, many of the claims made in respect of new media technologies as a basis for electronic democracy may be just that. While there is no doubt that the boycott has shown the capacity of the mobile phone for expanding the larger political space, the fact that it remains, by and large, an accessory of privilege, if not of the privileged, vitiates any assumptions about its potential for social organising.