Myopic Venture Of Ijaw Youths In Shutting Down Telecoms Masts In Bayelsa Over Contracts
The Oasis Reporters
July 30, 2019
The report that some Ijaw youths have made good their threat to shut down masts belonging to MTN, Glo, Airtel and other telecommunication firms in Bayelsa State have come to the civilized world with great bemusement and utter shock.
They have been reported to be picketing the firms over issues bordering on complaints by the youths that the companies excluded indigenes from quick-win contracts especially the supply of diesel to their facilities, according to The Nation Newspapers.
This action shows that the youths in Bayelsa State have no sense of history or geography, do not understand the society they live in and belong to the rentier class that have no value to add to society beyond looking for what they can take out of it, for their stomach sake.
Before President Olusegun Obasanjo introduced the GSM revolution into Nigeria that has become the backbone of communications, banking, security, transportation etc in several facets of national life, Bayelsa State that has more water mass than land mass, had virtually no great hopes whatsoever in accessing simple telephones, that the extinguished NITEL had to offer. A NITEL staff once told me that riverine communities should not expect telephones at all, since they had no land to erect poles that would carry cables. But of course, he didn’t envisage any advent of submarine cables from the government telecommunications provider. Or that wireless telephony would be the in thing, decades after our conversation.
Now GSM telephony has penetrated every nook and cranny of several parts of the nation, but rather than show some gratitude to the inventors and providers, Bayelsa youths are bickering over their entitlement to supply diesel to base stations that ought to have electricity supply from the national grid, if it were not for the scandalous nature of Nigeria’s abject lack of infrastructure.
Why can’t Bayelsa State youths join the vanguard by taxing their brains as other youths elsewhere do to provide solar power or other forms of energy to base stations rather than bicker over the supply of diesel? Perhaps, even harvest renewable energy and sell cheaper electricity to the firms, thus bringing costs down for companies and customers ?
The youths would soon discover that if base stations fail to function, they’d be off social media. Banks in Bayelsa State would have no network, therefore paying and receiving money, even from their siblings abroad would be disrupted and even the sick would be unable to speak to doctors far away to get solutions or explanations on their health conditions.
It would also affect education and many aspects of life would be interrupted, all because of their selfish desires.
It may not be too long in coming for base stations to completely disappear, when telecommunications firms would have driven their “masts” to satellites in orbit that would be powered, not by diesel, but by the sun. Then they will discover that their advocacy was for an about to be forgotten entitlement, which was myopic and short term in nature.
It will pay the youths more to wake up, smell the coffee and face the challenges of tomorrow, rather continue to hold the telecoms firms and the Bayelsa State community to ransom.
Written by Greg Abolo
