By Kingsley Muolokwu

Mobile data they say, is life. The internet has become an incredibly crucial part of our day to day life. Facebook Twitter, Instagram, etc, all boil down to the internet. Electronic Banking, electronic mail, e-commerce, etc, are all dependent on this same internet. Need I say more? Nah! I bet you discern how incredibly important this ingenious invention by the US is.

The Internet has tremendously added to the ease at which we live our lives today. Having been initially intended to be used for defense purposes, as at the time of its conception, the Internet has grown to become a crucial part of our daily lives.

This digitally crucial invention doesn’t come free, or cheap – especially in Nigeria. “If I were this important, I should be as expensive as I can get”, I bet the internet would say if it was human.

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Data subscription in Nigeria, has in recent years, evolved to become a new kind of cancer, eating deep into the ’cells’ of our various pockets.
Formerly, the so-called ’monthly’ subscriptions, lasted for an actual one month. The tariffs were low or perhaps, reasonable enough. They offered real value for your money. Browsing was fun, so was data subscription. We didn’t care about checking our data balance. All we cared about was to be able to exhaust our data before we lost it to expiration. Life was good – but then BOOM! Economy happened.

The economic state of the nation can be solely blamed for the high cost of data in Nigeria. The cost of data can be compared with cancer in this current state.
The ’green’ telecommunications company, Globacom, is synonymous with the huge allocation of data – but at what cost? In abundance of data, there’s network problem, which I reliably gathered they are working on. However, what will it profit you to have an almost unlimited supply of internet data that you can’t use, due to poor internet connection?

Mtn, on the other hand, provides you with a reasonable network, but you’ll have to pay through your nose to enjoy it. Let’s not talk about Airtel and 9Mobile. It feels like their staff remotely enjoy your data with you, once you subscribe.

In most countries, internet data plans are affordable to its citizens. The reverse is the case in Nigeria. Internet data subscriptions that used to last for a whole month, when used freely, can barely exceed three days in thorough economic usage. We are left to buy ’monthly’ data subscriptions, 4 to 7 times in a month. We’re helpless at this stage.

Just how much do these telecommunications networks charge, minus VAT? How high are their tariffs at this point? Or is the increase in VAT one of the main reasons it’s this high? These questions and more, I believe, are rumbling in the minds of many Nigerians.

Smaller internet providers are not left out. Internet providers like Smile, will let you buy an ’unlimited’ data plan, but then tell you that 20GB is the caps. How? Or is ’unlimited’ now some kind of a code name? Are we missing out on something here?

They all seem to hold us all firmly by the balls. They know too well how you can’t progress in today’s world without the internet. They seem to capitalize on that knowledge – is that fair?

The senate once considered ordinary Nigerian citizens. They once tried to get them to reduce the cost of their internet data tariff – but just like Nigeria’s mission 2020, this one failed woefully too.

Will protests solve this imminent problem? Will dialogues and petitions help? Or will boycott be the saving grace? Just as foggy as the future of Nigeria seems to appear at the moment, I’m not the one to take you down the lane of possibles. We all remain hopeful – hopefully, things will get better.

Kingsley Muolokwu is a social commentator in Lagos