Technology: The shape of things that are here

It would have been pure entertainment or at best a comedy of errors if the issues being discussed did not have the capacity to elicit a tragedy of epic proportions if allowed to unfold uncontrolled. As in their manner to intervene in matters of national interest, members of the National Assembly were venting their spleen on the near epidemic failure of the aviation sector, delay in flights, postponement or outright cancellation of flights, and then pouring salt on injury, the price hike that came – a flat N50,000 as baseline for a one way flight.

Emotionally, the airline operators could be guilty as charged. Even the body language of the lawmakers evidenced the guilt. But for me, it was the story of the snake looking at the stick instead of looking at the person holding the stick to snuff out its venomous life.

What will the air operators do? Charges at the airport are annoyingly multifarious. Have you ever tried to do an analysis of a ticket to determine how much really goes to the operators? Plus all that is the cost of aviation fuel that has flown up to the geostationary orbit, nothing is likely to bring it down except there is divine intervention up there. And I would never say here that God has abandoned us as a people because without Him this nation, in my opinion, would have been long gone.

I started with the story of the aviation industry because that is one field I have always prayed should not fail. Now reality stares us in the face and the auguries are horrible but the lawmakers want the airline operators to offer services with tears and sorrow and still remain safe in the skies! That is not the way it works. Even magic works for those who make determined efforts to achieve results.

As we drove out from my little end of town into the city of Abuja this fateful night, a couple of nights ago, it suddenly dawned on me that the aviation pain is only a poster but painful externality of the failure in nearly every strand of life in our nation, and there doesn’t seem to be anybody worrying enough to continue to shout about such failure which effects are paralytic.

This night, as in previous nights and the others that have followed, there was no light anywhere, except the audacious intrusion in the dark, of those who could go to the filling stations to rough out a fight and buy diesel for their generators at a cost that has joined the aviation fuel in the geostationary orbit. And people are struggling up there to buy and run a life a way from a government that would never stop to inconvenience them with despotic incompetence.

It suddenly occurred to me that we could wake up one morning and find out that Nigeria has achieved a state of nihilism, a scandalous retrogression to the age of darkness, from which our heroes past have tried to redeem us.

It occurred to me that one could wake up one morning and find out that AIT and Channels TV stations are off the air because they could not continue to buy diesel at nearly N700 a litre to run their operations. When I made this observation, my friend told me that such development would titillate the morbid sensibilities of a government that wouldn’t  want the people to have alternative channels to talk about its crass incompetence and a seeming apathy to the pains besetting the people.

At this rate only the NTA, the government station, would be on air because it gets subventions from government. But in there is the painful irony. Should the nation get to that degree of failure, even NTA will not be on air for too long a time because the budget it receives from government can really not buy more than sandwich in a TV market.

The signs are not good and the politicians are shopping for the next fellow to go to the seat of government where, it is whispered in hush tones, that a foreign construction company fuels the generators. Where the leaders, when they are around, live in surreal bliss, when the people fight for life or fight each other in pitch darkness, manifesting transferred aggression manufactured in the unfeeling hearts of their leaders.

Just as I was thinking about this article, the power grid collapsed totally leaving the entire nation in total darkness. This is the other thing that troubles my heart. You could wake up one morning and discover painfully that your phones cannot work because the mobile operators – MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9MOBILE could not continue to run their base stations on diesel. The phones are the most important pain relivers for most Nigerians, as they bury their pains inside the contents and pretend, like the ostrich with head buried in the sand, that the world out there is euphoric.

Even with the co-location policy put in place by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), making it possible for service providers to run as many base stations from a unique site, there may still be at least 50, 000 base stations operated by co-location service providers like IHS, American Tower Company (ATC), and SWAP, among others, to provide services to operators across board. Of all the major operators in Nigeria only Glo still runs its base stations independently. But the point at issue, is that since the Nigerian government failed in its promise to provide power to mobile operators at the dawn of a telecoms renaissance in 2001, the base stations spread across the nation, except in states where there are serious security challenges, are powered by generators. There are two generators per site. Just do the little math of buying diesel at N700 a litre to power the generators, the amount could be humongous.

So, it is not impossible to wake up one morning and all the networks are down. The operators are unable to power their equipment because of the cost of diesel, and they too will be agitating for a raise in tariff. Unfortunately for them and very fortunately for the subscribers, the telecoms service providers operate in a deregulated market where the regulator has a strong voice. Tariffs don’t just go up that way. The regulator will have to do a determination before setting a baseline tariff for the industry.

I am afraid to conclude here that the socio-economic fabric of the nation is fractured and salient voices are going into perplexing acquiescence of evil. It is wrong to continue to harp on the elastic endurance of Nigerians in the face of oppressive conditions or even evil. The rope is getting too tight. We shouldn’t wait for a wrench before waking up from a satanic sleep to do the needful and provide a little relief for the people, a comforting baseline to validate their humanity.