Apart from the general hardship in the country, one issue which has brought millions of Nigerians aches and severe pains sincethe arrival of the GSM in our country in 2001, is what is called by everyone of us as ‘network problem’. This problem seems to have worsened since other bigger problems such as run-away inflation and general economic uncertainty have come to blight our lives. Out of a hundred Nigerians who visit the banks everyday may be 20 per cent of them do so because of network-related issue which affects their payment and other transactions.
You make an electronic transfer to someone and the transaction hangs somewhere in the clouds and you are certain you have done what you are supposed to do but the recipient cannot ‘see’it in his credit balance because it has not ‘dropped’ and calls you persistently to say he has not seen what you have sent. Sometimes, for a while due to the same network issue both of you cannot get to hear each other until one of you has to send a text message. Even when this is done, the text may not get to the destination until after a considerable while.
You go to a POS and the operator inserts your card into his machine and returns the verdict that approval for your transaction has failed or is ‘declined’. He makes another trial and gives you the same verdict. Anxious to withdraw some cash, you ask him to try again and that one succeeds. But unknown toyou, the first two so-called unsuccessful attempts and the last successful one have wiped out your credit holding as the two so-called declined transactions have succeeded in debiting you. The money debited from your account has not gone to the POS operator. It is hanging somewhere in your own bank and not in your account!
This was what happened to me in my village Gakem on the 19thof last month. And since my bank, the UBA, does not have a branch in Ogoja which is the nearest big town to my place, I had to undergo a trip to Ikom some one hundred and ten kilometers away in order for a reversal of my money debited without payment.
I had to undertake the trip by public transport and in the vehicle I travelled by, there were four of us from Bekwarra LGA alone who were customers of the same UBA bank who all had one challenge or another with the payment system and must be in a branch of the bank to be able to sort the matters out. No one can say of other UBA customers from Yala, Ogoja, Obudu and Obanlikwu LGAs of Northern CRS who had to leave their villages in order to get to Ikom or Abakaliki in Ebonyi state because no branch of the bank exists in their LGA headquarters.
When I eventually got to Ikom, throughout the day, there was no network for withdrawal or for the production of debit cards for those whose problem was a debit card one. Only skeletal service existed for form transfers through a POS.
The story was all very frustrating.
There in the bank at Ikom were men and women from all parts of the CRS Northern Senatorial District who were forced to congregate at that location in Ikom. It was there that I also met former Senator Matthew Mbu Jnr who had come from BokiLGA because no branch of UBA was in Ogoja which is nearer than Ikom. You begin to wonder about this network problem. What is really wrong with our system that the telecommunication providers do not seem to have any solution to it and men and women have to suffer so much because of it?What is it in this matter that over the years when it became noticeable, no one seems to have bothered to effect a correction for the benefit of the economy and social life in our country?
