Omokri’s Lies On The Reasons MTN Overtook Vodacom In Africa: It’s Not South Africa’s Patronage But Nigeria’s Figures
The Oasis Reporters
July 26, 2023
@gregabolo
@Theoasisreport1
Reno Omokri who once worked in the presidency has been demarketing Foreign Direct Investment firms that came into the country because many of them have made substantial progress for themselves and the country.
He recently told sophisticated lies about open facts regarding the telecommunications sector. This write-up will “fact-check” as he always flippantly demands, hoping that no one will bother, to allow his lies sail through.
He tweets:
“No matter how ugly a monkey may look, its mother still loves it. But in Nigeria’s case, we want to buck that rule. Foreign brands may outperform some Nigerian brands, but we must still patronise local alternatives, because that is the only way they can grow and compete favourably with those foreign brands”.
He goes on to insult the intelligence of Nigerians.
” It is incredibly myopic to say you won’t patronise Glo until they are as good as MTN“.
Really?
Do Nigerians not patronize Glo ? As well as MTN? They do!
“It shows you are ignorant of the economics of scale. Only by patronising Glo can they become as good as, and even better than, MTN”.
What is the reality? Are Nigerians not giving Glo massive support? They are! Right from day one!
As Reno Omokri proceeds to insult the sensibilities of Nigerians, he slips in lies to further his propaganda. He says in addition:
“There is Vodafone in South Africa. It is called Vodacom. It was better than MTN. But South Africans are not like you. They are patriotic. They love their country”.
Its an insult to say or imply that Nigerians are not patriotic.
Reno, reign on in lies!
“They knew that if they kept on patronising the better Vodafone, their own MTN won’t grow, and Vodafone, through Vodacom, would continue repatriating South African money and jobs to the United Kingdom. So they preferred MTN until it grew to be better than Vodacom”.
Lie! Cheap lie! Continue:
“But these foreign firms are counting on Nigerians not being as patriotic and as forward thinking as South Africans. And to an extent, they are right. We are conspicuously the type of children who openly tell the world that their neighbour’s food is better than his mother’s and that we will continue eating outside.
“There is nothing some Nigerians love to do more than talk down on Nigeria. Not Nigerian leaders. Nigeria. It is perhaps why colonialism was so successful in Nigeria and not as resisted as in other colonised countries. A critical mass of our people are not forward thinking enough to understand the cause-and-effect relationship their consumption of foreign goods and services has on their own standard of life.”
Fact-check:
When GSM commenced in South Africa in 1994, Vodacom had a huge spread, followed by Orange Telecoms. As a matter of fact, MTN was a distant third.
That MTN shot to become Africa’s number one was not because of South Africans, but the addition of the figures in it’s Nigeria’s operations. Globacom was not existing then. It came a year after.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo came out of prison in 1998 (four years after the launch of GSM telephony in South Africa), and became president of Nigeria in 1999.
Between that year and 2001 when GSM fully launched, the Nigerian government invited mostly Africa “centric” GSM companies to bid for licenses in an open and transparent manner.
Rather than make an immediate move to grab the opportunity, Vodacom set up a commission to investigate the viability of plunging into the virgin Nigerian market. The committee turned up its report denigrating the Nigerian market over issues of insecurity, a dismal lack of electricity and many other infrastructural negatives.
Not so with MTN that saw the Nigerian glass as half full, not half empty.
Yes, Nigeria had no electricity to power the whole country. So it planned to buy two giant generating sets to power each of it’s base stations, nationwide.
MTN saw what Vodacom looked at but failed to see. With a population of over 120 million, MTN saw a potentially huge market. South Africa had a population that was less than 50 million.
So MTN enthusiastically plunged into the Nigerian market with two feet in. Abuja welcomed it. Obasanjo was beaming with smiles.
Then with highly thrilling radio and television jingles, coupled with adverts in newspapers and billboards, the company put smiling Nigerians in an upbeat mood.
MTN South Africa – which is the second-largest contributor to MTN Group service revenue after MTN Nigeria – grew subscriber numbers by more than 800 000, or 8.1%, to 35.9 million in the period to 30 September 2022. That is in South Africa.
MTN Nigeria began operations in August 2001
It began operations in Nigeria in 2001 after it had spent $285m for one of four GSM licenses in the country in January 2001.
For Nigeria, the cell phone arrived its shores in 1996 which was 23 years after the world, when the government’s telephone monopoly – Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), launched it as an expansion of its vastly restrictive teledensity, with the total number of telephone lines in the country then numbering.
MTN is undoubtedly the largest telecom company in Nigeria. According to statistics from July, the telecom company boasted 55.2m subscribers. In perspective, Nigeria accounts for more than 25% of the MTN Group subscriber base globally in 2018.
Read more:
Vodacom is the mobile leader in South Africa having grown its market (y-o-y) from 44.3 million active subscribers to 45.77 million as at December 31st 2021. This represent a 42 per cent market share.
Imagine this: In 2018, MTN boasted 55.2m subscribers in Nigeria. Yet 3 years later, Vodacom was just slowly moving from 44.3 million active subscribers to 45.77 million as at December 31st 2021, representing a 42 per cent market share.
Figures state that Vodacom is the mobile leader in South Africa. The statistics are there. Reno Omokri is just writing whatever comes to his mind in the morning. It will help him to always fact-check first.
As soon as the African figures started to crunch in favour of MTN’s ascension on the ladder, Vodacom started biting it’s tongue over it’s missed opportunities to get into the Nigerian market. They tried to buy Econet Wireless’s license due to the financial difficulties the company was experiencing in it’s home country of Zimbabwe. Even though it was ousted, it went to court in the UK for arbitration.
That scared Vodacom off from taking the Econet Wireless license over. If not, they had used the backdoor to enter Nigeria and became V-mobile.
It was a panicky period as secretly and openly, MTN in Nigeria started to drop the price of it’s sim cards that started off in the region of 20,000 naira every week until it fell below 1,000 naira. They knew that Vodacom could afford to give out free Sims. MTN’s customer care service officers could then call subscribers at random and chit chat to find out areas of improvement. That was due to the fear of Vodacom competition in the country.
Luckily for them, Econet Wireless sufficiently scared Vodacom off. Today, MTN Nigeria is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Over this, Reno Omokri is furious.
He tweets again:
“So, how come MTN, a South African firm, is the largest company in the Nigerian Stock Market? They control almost 17% of our entire stock exchange. The second is Airtel, an Indian company, with nearly 15%”.
Yet in another tweet, he says:
“If I were President Tinubu, I would introduce some heavy killer taxes that will drive MTN, DSTV, and Shoprite out of Nigeria to be replaced by Nigerian-owned businesses”.
Funny. Reno Omokri wants to”drive” FDI that Nigerian presidents successively struggled hard to attract into the country, out.
This nature of bitterness is very sad. It’s unhelpful.
By Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
