NewStats: 3,265,457 , 8,186,784 topics. Date: Sunday, 15 June 2025 at 03:58 AM 681o3d

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Peter Obi Is Committing A Political Suicide - Kenneth Okonkwo
https://www.nairaland.4free.org/8450479/peter-obi-committing-political-suicide

The interviewer said that Peter Obi insinuated (in one of his TV appearances) that Kenneth Okonkwo betrayed him. This was Kenneth Okonkwo's response.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65XDcqfYnf0?si=u4yV__YvStWUI92F

Dr Moses Paul is one of the leaders of the Obidient Movement.

Dr Mo (Moses Paul) @Drmopaul

First and foremost, let us be very clear:
Which interview? Can the interviewer or Barr. Kenneth Okonkwo kindly clarify where Mr. Peter Obi ever used the word “betrayed” or accused anyone of betrayal? Mr. Peter Obi has never, at any point, used such a word in reference to anybody. If Barr. Kenneth Okonkwo insists otherwise, let him come out openly and state where, when, and in what context Mr. Peter Obi called him a betrayer.

This is simply a fabricated narrative, being manufactured to stir emotions and provide a cheap excuse to decamp, just like Chief Segun Showunmi.

With due respect, may I ask: has Barr. Kenneth Okonkwo ever contested and won any election? What is his record in public service or governance? Even in his primary profession as an actor, how far did he go? These are valid questions for proper context.

Mr. Peter Obi's journey is public knowledge. He has built businesses from the ground up, not only nationally but also internationally. He governed Anambra State with distinction and integrity. Till date, no person, no institution, no bank, and no government agency has ever accused him of stealing public funds. His records remain impeccable, verifiable, and globally respected.

The honest truth is that the highest public visibility Barr. Kenneth Okonkwo has enjoyed in recent years came from his association with Mr. Peter Obi. That is simply the reality.

Let’s also be factual: in his interview, Mr. Peter Obi clearly stated that he reserves the right to move on. Since October last year, he has worked with the Obidient Movement and the Senator Nenadi Usman, the Ag National Chairman of the Labour Party independently, without aligning with the Abure faction. One must then ask: where exactly is Barr. Kenneth Okonkwo getting his information? Since the formation of the Caretaker Committee, Mr. Peter Obi has not associated with Barr. Abure.

Let us also address the political recklessness we are witnessing: when a former party chairman begins to openly insult sitting governors, calling them names like "graf", what serious political leader would associate with such uncouth behavior? Mr. Peter Obi has always stood for decency, dignity, and disciplined politics.

What we are witnessing now is a well-orchestrated operation: “Destroy Peter Obi.”

When they saw that Nigerians no longer take the likes of Bwala and Reno seriously, they simply recruited fresh faces to push the same tired agenda. But Nigerians are watching.

The truth remains unshakable. Truth has no substitute.

-DrMo

https://x.com/Drmopaul/status/1933861370274947277?t=K657HbUyEEEQmUrDlgyg_w&s=19

OgaRico:
Great informative write up sir.
Please, is it possible to throw some light on how Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. later got licenced when he bounced back with Globacom? Considering his Company(CIL) lost it licence and the Government wouldn't listen to the plead by Nigerian to let them back on board.

The first auction was in 2001 and MTN, Econet and CIL won licenses. The winners were given a deadline to present a bank guarantee that they would pay for the licenses.

CIL's French bankers were hesitant. Celia Motophone had sued the government for cancelling their license. I can't for sure, but I think the frequency was the same frequency that was given to CIL. What if the government lost the case and the bank lost its money?

CIL was eventually able to convince the bank to provide the guarantee, but the deadline had ed. People begged government, because CIL was the only Nigerian company that won a license, but government insisted that it was sticking to the rules. CIL's license was revoked.


There was another auction 2 years later (in 2003). Dr Mike Adenuga tried again with another company called Globacom. He won the license and this time he was able to provide the guarantee and pay for the license on time.

Security.

There were many very violent riots by university students from the late 1970s to the early 1990s and all the universities in the country were often shut down.

Very few people had phones and it became normal for people to go to their neighbours' houses to call their children's guardians in other states after such riots.

The phones usually stopped working during coups. Coupists did not want military commanders to be able to communicate by phone so they usually went to shut down the exchanges and national switching centers. Therefore, there were soldiers guarding some Nitel facilities in order to defend them against coupists.

This is a rotary dial telephone, like the kind that we had. We initially had a black one and we later had a blue phone.

Photos of the old Ikoyi Exchange at Falomo Roundabout. It has been demolished and turned into a mall.

MTel was the mobile phone subsidiary of Nitel. It was the second mobile operator in Nigeria.

MTS 1st Wireless was the first mobile phone operator in Nigeria.

Intercellular was founded by the elder brother of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.

Photo 1) Hotline Ericsson

Photo 2) Chief MKO Abiola using a mobile phone sometime in 1993 or 1994. that Chief Abiola was arrested in 1993 and died in detention in 1998.

Photo 3) Major Hamza Al-Mustapha using a mobile phone sometime between 1993 and 1998. that Major Mustapha was arrested in 1998 and was in detention till 2013 by which time he had been retired from the military.

Photo 4) A Nitel phone card and public pay phone. These pay phones were not in booths but were attached to walls with little shelters to protect them.

The evolution of telecommunications in Nigeria, a personal story.


P&T, NET & NECOM.

When I was a kid, domestic telecommunications services were provided by the Posts and Telecommunications Department (P&T), while international telecommunications services were provided by the Nigerian External Communications Department (NET or NECOM).


Dialing tone

I was basically the telephone operator in my house. My dad would shout, "Naptu2, call the National Stadium for me" or "Call Onikan Stadium for me" or "Call Uncle ***". I had all these numbers stored in my head (I can actually still some of them more than 40 years later).

You had to wait for a dialing tone before you could make a call. Basically we had analogue exchanges with limited space and you had to wait for space on the exchange.

It was very easy to get dialing tone early in the morning, late at night and on weekends, but on weekday afternoons it could take more than 30 minutes to get dialing tone.

The main business district was on Lagos Island in the 1970s and '80s and it was very difficult to get through to Lagos Island numbers on weekday afternoon because of the high traffic from all the offices at the Broad Street and Marina area.


Area codes

There were area codes for the different districts back then.

Ikoyi numbers began with 68

Victoria Island numbers began 61

Lagos Island numbers began with 62

Festac numbers began with 88

Ikeja numbers began with 97

Etc.

I knew where all the exchanges were. Ikoyi Exchange was at Falomo Roundabout, Lagos Island Exchange was on Odunlami Street, Victoria Island Exchange was on Saka Tinubu Street, Yaba Exchange was on Herbert Macaulay Way and Ikeja Exchange was on Airport Road (Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way).

There were two international gateways, the submarine cable landed at Victoria Island and was connected at Saka Tinubu and the satellite earth station was at Lanlate.


P&T Telephone Directory

We had the 1978, 1979, 1981 and the 1983 National Telephone Directories.

The National Telephone Directory contained the phone numbers and addresses of everybody that had a phone in Nigeria, except those that specifically requested to be unlisted.

The directory was divided into two parts, the White Pages and the Yellow Pages. The White Pages contained the phone numbers of individuals, while the Yellow Pages contained the phone numbers of companies that had paid to be listed in the Yellow Pages.

I love reading and I read just about anything and I that my brother exclaimed one day that I had gone as far as reading the telephone directory like a novel. Well, I had discovered that you could actually find out where famous people lived by reading the telephone directory. I was also fascinated by all the companies that were listed and the various services that they provided. For example, AGS Bama always had the inside front page advert in the directory and their adverts were also prominent on the NTA Network News back then (early 1980s).

Short codes

There was also another fascinating thing on the first page of the directory. It contained all the short codes. More than 40 years have ed, but let's see if I can all of them.

199 was for emergency (Ambulance, Fire, Police)

198 was for the speaking clock ( "At the sound of the tone the time will be 8 o'clock" )

197 was the ring back code (you call 197, wait for the tone and then drop the phone and your phone will ring)

I can't what the code for the operator was.

Kids were often taught to dial 199 in an emergency, but they were also scared from misusing the service by being told that they would be arrested if they dialled 199 when there was no emergency.

I got the chance to test the service around 1982 when NEPA Building was on fire. I called 199 and the Fire Service came and put out the fire.

I that my aunt came to stay with us for a while and she usually received an important long distance call, so on April 1st, 1983, while she was in the bathroom, we dialled the ringback code and the phone rang. We then knocked on the bathroom door and shouted that she had a call from *****.


She ran out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and went to the phone. As soon as she picked up the receiver we shouted, "April fool"!


Phone bill

There was a time that our phone bill was paid by the government, because of my dad, there was a time that half of our phone bill was paid by the government, because of my mum and there was a time that we paid the entire phone bill.

I that sometimes I could be talking to my friend and won't realise the time and an hour would have gone by and my mum would complain. My friend would tell me to cut the call and he would call me back. He would call and another hour would and I would hear his mum complaining, so we would end the call.

My dad would not let any call go beyond 5 minutes. He would insist that phones were for emergency and important communication and that we should go to our friends' houses if we wanted to chat.

As you can guess, these were postpaid bills (you were billed each month after you had used the phone).


Coin boxes

I was able to monitor a lot of developments in the telecommunications sector because I had a relative that worked at P&T and I asked a lot of questions.

There was a time in the early 1980s that P&T set up a lot of telephone booths. I found out that they were called "Coin Boxes" within P&T. We still used kobo coins back then and there was a slot for you to put in a coin in order to make a call.

The coin boxes were removed after a number of years and I found out why. My relative told me that thieves often broke into the machine to steal coins.


TOS

You must be familiar with the problems that we currently have with electricity. Well, back then we had similar problems with telephones. Your phone could be on TOS. TOS means Temporarily Out of Service. Your phone might not work for months, even though you've paid your bills. It could be like dead furniture, not serving any purpose.

I that, sometimes we might suddenly hear the phone ring, but nobody would go to pick it up. Instead we would look at ourselves like, "Did the phone really ring"? That's when the phone suddenly starts working after being on TOS for months.


Nitel

P&T was broken into 2 in 1985. The Posts Department was converted into a company called NIPOST, while the Telecommunications Department was merged with the Nigerian External Telecommunications Department to create NITEL.


Nitel cards

NITEL reintroduced public pay phones, but it was different from the coin boxes. The new pay phones used cards instead of coins.

Furthermore, one of the problems of the coin boxes was that homeless people and lunatics sometimes lived in the booths. Well, the new Nitel pay phones were not in booths. These pay phones were attached to walls with a little roof/shelter to shield the phones from the sun and rain.

Very few people in Nigeria had private telephones back then and you would often see long queues of people waiting at these public pay phones for their turn to use the phone. This was especially the case at the pay phone outside the Lagos Island Exchange at Odunlami.


IDD

Once upon a time you had to go through the telephone operator to make long distance calls.

If, for example I want to call a person in Amsterdam, I would need to call the P&T operator to "book a call". I'll give the operator the phone number of the person that I wish to speak to and the operator will tell when I will most likely receive the call.

At the appointed time the operator would call Amsterdam and connect to the person that you wish to speak to, then he would call you and connect both of you. That was how long distance calls were done back then.

Some interstate calls also had to be done through the operator.

There was a day that the phone rang and I picked it up. The person on the line said some strange gibberish that I couldn't understand, so I called my mother and gave the phone to her. My mother later explained that it was my uncle who was a ship captain. He was in Amsterdam and the person that I had heard was the telephone operator (probably saying, "Hold on for your caller" or something like that).

However, NITEL lainched IDD in 1989. Lagos Island and Victoria Island exchanges were the first exchanges to receive the IDD feature. IDD means International Dial Direct. It meant that a caller could make international calls without going through the operator.

However, subscribers with the IDD feature had to pay a service charge.

I a very funny conversation in 1989 or 1990. We had a family friend who had played in the Nigerian national football team in the 1950s and 1960s and he lived at 1004 on Victoria Island. He was complaining to my relative about his phone bill. She explained to him that he was being charged for the IDD feature, but he was angry and insisted that he didn't need the feature, so why would he be charged for it? She tried to explain that he could not he isolated and that everybody that was connected to the Lagos Island and Victoria Island exchanges automatically had IDD and had to pay for the service.

The Abacha Regime temporarily suspended the IDD service in the 1990s because some Nigerians were misusing it. This was around the time that the term "419" became widely known.

A lot of business centers had been established in the 1990s and they provided public pay phone and fax services. Some Nigerians used the IDD feature and fax machines to make scam calls and send scam letters. The government shut down a lot of business centers, arrested their owners and temporarily suspended the IDD service.


Digitalisation
Nigerian phone numbers were initially 3 digit numbers, then they became 5 digit numbers and the 6 digit numbers. 7 digit numbers were introduced in 1991 when digital exchanges were installed at Lagos Island and Victoria Island.

We previously had analogue exchanges, but they had very limited capacity. As a result people had to wait a long time for dialling tone and many people who wanted phones could not get them because there was no capacity.

There were less than 100,000 phones in the whole of Nigeria and people in certain places had to buy wire and poles because the exchanges in their area had reached their full capacity.

For example, a subscriber on Lagos Island might be asked to buy wires and poles so that he would be connected to the Yaba Exchange because the Lagos Island Exchange was full and he couldn't wait for space to be freed up before he got a phone.

Few Nigerians had phone and the then minister of communications, Colonel David Mark, said that telephones were not for the poor.

Things were improved in 1991 when Lagos Island and Victoria Island became the first areas in Nigeria to receive digital exchanges. I could easily tell the difference.

With the old analogue exchanges, you had to wait a few seconds after dialling before you got a response, but when I called Lagos Island after they got their new exchange, I received an immediate and instantaneous response.

As I said, this introduced the 7 digit era to Nigeria. Victoria Island numbers previously began with 61, but after digitalisation it became 261. Lagos Island numbers that previously started with 62 became 262.

Nigeria had around 100,000 phone lines at the end of the Nitel monopoly.


Fibre optic cable and copper wire

In the late 1980s, Nitel began a programme of replacing copper wires with fibre optic cables.

Nitel phone wires (which hung on poles and were also buried underground like your electricity wires) were previously copper wires, but copper cannot carry data, only voice, so sometime around 1989 NITEL began laying fibre optic cables across Nigeria.


Radio phone

Large companies need to stay in touch with their workers and wealthy businessmen need to stay in touch with their businesses, but there was no mobile phone network in Nigeria.

Therefore, these companies and businessmen used radio phones. These were radios that were designed like mobile phones and car phones and they enabled the businessman to communicate on the go. However, I do not believe that they were connected to the public phone network (P&T/Nitel).

Famous radio companies had branches in Nigeria and they sold equipment to Nitel and to private businesses.

I that Ericsson's office was on Keffi Street in Ikoyi in the 1980s and early 1990s and the Hotline Ericsson was a popular radio phone that was being sold in Nigeria.


First Generation of mobile telecommunications companies (1993)

The Babangida istration introduced mobile phones to Nigeria in 1993. It also set up the Nigerian Communications Commission to license and regulate private telecommunications companies.

The first mobile networks in Nigeria used the Total Access Communication System (TACS) and ETACS system. This is what is often called 1G technology. It was an analogue system

Two mobile phone operators were licensed. There was MTS 1st Wireless, which was a private company and there was NITEL's subsidiary MTel, which was owned by government.

My relative that worked at Nitel told me that there were just 2 base stations in Lagos, one at Victoria Island and the other at Ikeja.

The phones had telescopic antennas, but even with them, the signal was quite poor. You often had to wind your car window down in order to improve reception.

The phones and lines were very expensive and only the rich could afford them.

The code for mobile phones at that time was 090 and Ali Baba told a joke that made that code very popular. It was about a businessman that wanted to give someone his phone number and he began with, "Nought-nine-nought, dozen, dozen". Nigerians therefore nicknamed the system "Nought-Nine-Nought".

Second generation of mobile telecommunications companies (1997)

The second generation of mobile telecommunications companies were licensed in 1997. These networks operated on the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system. It is a digital system that was popular in the United States.

These networks were very good, but they were heavily restricted by the military government so that they would not become more powerful than Nitel.

For example, they each company was restricted to certain states and they did not have national roaming rights.

There was a man that was a senior executive at Nitel in the 1980s and early 1990s. His name is Bashir Ahmad El-Rufai (the elder brother of Nasir El-Rufai). He resigned from Nitel and set up Intercellular. It was one of the popular CDMA networks in the 1990s.

Other popular CDMA networks in the 1990s include Multilinks and Mobitel.

These private telecoms companies (PTO) increased the number of lines in Nigeria and we had around 700,000 lines in the country back then.


Pagers

As I said, those phones were very expensive and only the rich could afford them. Therefore, pagers were introduced into Nigeria. Quite often an executive would have a mobile phone and his personal assistant would have a pager.


GSM

The Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) was a digital mobile phone system that was popular in Europe.

The Abacha Regime was about to introduce GSM to Nigeria and they licensed Celia Motophone to run GSM services. However, General Abacha died before it could be introduced.

The Abdulsalam Abubakar istration confirmed the license and also licensed CIL to run GSM services, but both companies had problems connecting to the Nitel network. This was the situation when General Abubakar left office.

Celia Motophone had done a lot of publicity, but they had not been able to take off.

President Olusegun Obasanjo came and cancelled all the licenses. You see, Celia Motophone was owned by Gilbert Chagoury, who was a close friend of General Abacha and President Obasanjo believed that they got the license at a very cheap price and that Nigeria could get a better deal.

Celia Motophone sued the government.

President Obasanjo's government organised a public auction of licenses, which was nationally televised and MTN, Econet and CIL won the bids.

MTN was a South African company, Econet was owned by Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa and CIL was owned by Nigerian billionaire Dr Mike Adenuga Jr.

However, CIL's bankers were nervous because of the lawsuit by Celia Motophone and they delayed in providing the necessary bank guarantees. CIL therefore lost its license.

Many Nigerians appealed to the government to consider CIL's situation, but the government said that it was sticking to the rules.


The phones, lines and tariffs were initially very expensive, but competition brought an improvement.

Dr Mike Adenuga bounced back with a company called Globacom and crashed prices to the extent that everybody could afford to have a mobile phone.

The introduction of the GSM system increased the number of lines in Nigeria to several millions.


Fourth generation of mobile phone companies

GSM lines were initially very expensive and people noticed that the old CDMA lines and tariffs were cheaper. This led to the creation of new CDMA companies like Reliance Telecom (RelTel), Starcomms, and Visafone


Internet

Internet services were introduced to Nigeria by the National Center for Communication Technologies (NCCT), a government agency, in 1991. Internet services were mainly used by government agencies and large companies at that time and the service was painfully slow.

In 1995, the Regional Information Network of Africa (RINAF) collaborated with Rose Clayton Nigeria Limited to provide internet services at Yaba College of Technology.

By 1996, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) licensed 38 ISPs, and Linkserve Limited became the first ISP to start commercial operations in Nigeria.

The popular internet service providers (ISPs) at the end of the 1990s were Linkserve and Hyperia
(Hyperia is owned by the Chagourys).

Many Nigerians accessed the internet via cybercafes until the mobile phone companies made it cheap and easy for Nigerians to access the internet from their phones.



Further reading

Pictures Of The First Nigerian Owned Satellite Earth Station
https://www.nairaland.4free.org/7900683/pictures-first-nigerian-owned-satellite


Photos of the Nigerian National Telephone Directory.

Putindbutt:

On this very thread, there's no source, no link/url, yet I was able to create and submit it. So why is the earlier one that failed different from this one?

You need to post 40 characters, that is, 40 letters and spaces, before it will accept your post.

However, those letters and spaces must not be in the quotes [quote][/quote]

It only counts letters and spaces that are not in the quotes, so you need to put 40 more characters outside the quotes before it will accept your post.

I suggested that you should use the url to make the extra 40 characters.

Putindbutt:
Trying to create a thread and this was what it's responding

Original content

It's not counting what you quoted. Add the link/url address of the source and that should make it 40 characters. In other words, post 40 characters outside the quotation.