ON September 19, 2003, following weeks of concerted mobilization, mobile telephone subscribers in the country took the unprecedented step of switching off their phones. With the Great GSM Boycott, as it was dubbed, the subscribers were desperate to convey their frustration with the shoddiness of the services being provided by the mobile telephone networks. The subscribers’ litany of protests included poor reception, dropped calls, one-sided contract terms and arbitrary deduction of call credits. While compliance with the mass switch off was, not unexpectedly, patchy, the boycott had the symbolic effect of bringing attention to the primitive nature of the services that Nigerian mobile telephone subscribers were paying exorbitant money for.
Almost 15 years to the anniversary of that original boycott, little has changed in regard to the quality of telecom services enjoyed (hardly…
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