Last night, I finally had a chance to speak with Dr. Law Anikpo (my contact at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital), and he mentioned that having a mobile phone would be essential during my stay here. So today, I went with Mr. Azih to a place called the Ikeja Computer Village, a section of Lagos devoted entirely to the selling of electronics merchandise (where I noticed a strong presence of Samsung and LG). Once there, with the help of Mr. Azih, I bought a cheap phone for 3600 naira, the equivalent of about 20 bucks, and a couple recharge cards (which are basically prepaid phone credits) to use during my stay in Nigeria. The recharge card system is nifty in the sense that you end up paying for exactly how much you use, and by exactly, I mean on a per-second basis. The rates are reasonable, too -- about 50 kobo/second, which translates to about 20 cents/minute.
Though I did see some phone lines throughout the town, my impression was that everyone relied on wireless phones to communicate with each other. I never saw a landline telephone during my stay in Lagos. The penetration of the mobile phone industry was also very impressive. "Even the hawkers [street vendors] all have phones," Mr. Azih tells me. This was not always the case. Until less than a decade ago, when mobile telecommunications was still under government control (Nitel), the administration was not very concerned with the use of telephones by the people. In the words of one minister, "Why should the poor have phones?", a comment that reflects how out of touch the officials were with the rest of Nigeria. However, after telecommunications were handed over to private companies, Nigeria saw a boom in phone usage all across the country.
Oh yeah, in case anybody wants to call me, my number is +234-803-500-3057.
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