Despite the fact that I try to keep up with the rest of the world, I still seem to be living in the 1980s.
Oh I try. Believe me I try. I buy the latest equipment but I can't enjoy its full potential. In fact, I don't even know the full potential of most things I buy. Its a bit disconcerting.
Like when I accidentally pressed a side button on my nokia phone (I had always thought it was a funky little style feature that didn't do anything but look space-age) and the phone showed this little query "Activate push-to-talk?". Makes you feel really ignorant when your machine acts like that. By the way, what's "Push-To-Talk"?
So what am I complaining about? Nothing really! I mean why should I or any Nigerian have anything to complain about? Everything's perfectly alright here. Nothing is wrong here. Life's - good (as LG would say). Don't look to those so-called developed countries for any so-called benchmarks for excellence, what do they know about standards?
Who says we're supposed to have electricity 24/7? In an ideal world, power outtages should be the norm for a change of pace. Abi? And who told you your phone calls are supposed to go through and connect on the first try, every time?
And how would you know you had faced an emergency if help had come immediately you had called? Don't you also want to testify in your church or mosque of God's miraculous intervention?
And everybody in Naija knows that you are not supposed to browse the internet too quickly or you'll miss out on the wonderfully fulfilling experience of staring at the same webpage for ages while waiting for the next to download. How deliciously zen!
In case you didn't figure it out yet, I was being sarcastic. The ills of our nation are just too many to chronicle here and I quite frankly haven't got the time or patience to take on each sector one by one - who's going to pay me to do that anyway. But I will take on a few:
How come no-one seems to mind that the NCC is permitting Starcomms & Reltel to get away with charging us ridiculous amounts like about 80dollars a month for internet access at speeds of about 16kbits a second?
A similar company in Ghana offers over 400kbits/sec at the equivalent of 40Cedis (about $40 with the new Ghanaian currency denominations). That's 20 times the speed for half the price of Starcomms and Reltel. Never mind those ads, go to 2wire.com to do a free speed-test and see for yourself. They're lying to us.
How come we have this great big satellite in the sky and we're not using it? Yes I'm talking about the same NigComSat-1 that Engr. Ernest Ndukwe of the NCC told our senators was not legally allowed to operate and give you and me telephony, VOIP and data-transfer services.
The satellite also offers DTH Television, High Definition Broadcast facilities and the ability to find planes that crash (For more on what that baby was built to do, checkout www.nigcomsat.org)
NigComSat-1 during pre-launch tests at Xichang launch center, China I think its a shame that we bought and installed a nice (and necessary) piece of gadgetry in our bit of outer space but we can't use it. Whoever heard of a person buying a TV and not watching it because it was incompatible with a wall-socket? That's just plain dumb... change the socket!
In the same vein, its dumb that our lawmakers haven't yet announced needed changes to our laws to accommodate NigComSat-1, like Engr Ndukwe was implying.
I wish I could hack into the National Assembly communications system and over-ride David Mark and Bankole's microphone to tell them this: I don't care if it was over-priced or if it cannot match the capabilities of the best communications satellites over the U.S., if I bought it then I WANNA USE IT!
$312million NigComSat-1 being launched into space
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