NewStats: 3,265,545 , 8,187,161 topics. Date: Sunday, 15 June 2025 at 05:08 PM 142d1x

Omo the Chagoury family don teh for nigeria market. Balling from time immorial

What a read! It’s so insightful and informative

naptu2:
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).


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


Photos of the Nigerian National Telephone Directory.

WHAT ERA are we or i say what STAGE?

na MTN dem must PURSUE next

Fond memory . Thank u Naptu2. I late in the 70/80 wen we gathered in a custom officer room yo received International call .That same custom officer nah only him got VHF and color 📺 in the Compound in those days.Wecrest go use lucozade nylon plaster our papa white/black 📺 . Chai! Nig we hail thee

Really enjoyed reading this. Thank you so much







We've come a long way

Naptu2's thread always a banger.....

Ogbemi debe tan...

Informative. Educative, Entertative.

richiemcgold:
I a friend's dad who always padlocked his phone . It was a NITEL landline. The phone was always under lock and no one had the key except the man.

There was a solution to this. Tapping the receiver in a certain pattern would still connect you.

This is a well-written chronicle of telephone and communication evolution in Nigeria.
In the mid-eighties and early nineties, I had a transistor radio that could magnet telephone signals or conversations whenever I stood under the NEPA Powerline that ran through my village. Is there any engineer in the house who can explain to me why this was possible then?

Thank you very much for this historical presentation!

Great archival stuff!

naptu2:
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.

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.

naptu2:
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://nairaland.cracksfree.org/7900683/pictures-first-nigerian-owned-satellite


Photos of the Nigerian National Telephone Directory.

naptu2:
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.

so you be old man 🙄🙄 I when our telephone will ring you you don't dare touch it when popsy is around..

That Nitel phone booth, call card and the classic phone is the real deal. Yellow pages was hot cake for 419 guys then as yellow pages contains rich people's and business owners. This OP nah correct old boy. Nostalgia 🤣

Excellent documentary. Good one and keep it up.

Omo, i nor fit relate!

Wait oh. OP said Nigerian football had a national team in 1950s and 1960s, how come?

jmoore:
I can vividly how I used to eavesdrop to telephone conversations back then with our TV.

Those NITEL lines weren't secured at all.

It was not all the time na. It just happened sometimes that you pick up the phone and then you would hear people talking

Those giant books was sweet. We used it to find everybodys house and their families

Dtruthspeaker:


It was not all the time na. It just happened sometimes that you pick up the phone and then you would hear people talking

Read my comment again. TV not telephone.

Our TV was picking up telephone conversations on uhf.

jmoore:

Read my comment again. TV not telephone.

Our TV was picking up telephone conversations on uhf.

Oh! On Tv? Which Tv is dat? I suspect JVC.

On this catching things this is where I that sometimes our tv catches CNN, MTV, Sky 1, Sky News when one neighbour bought that big wide satellite dish. Did you experience that ?

Our landline was 8360**. Surulere.

I still after these years

That dialing tone issue ehn loool and one could eavesdrop on a convo another person is having on a call with the 2nd phone upstairs. I vividly the one in the parlour was that round one naptu posted same colour and they bought one we could press the buttons in the master bedroom. We were so happy at the upgrade

Very educating post. I peeping through the window to have a glance of land line in one hospital close to our house

Very educational and enlightening thread.

Oh, I still my dad (God rest his soul) buying a multi-link landline and one of those mobile phones for home use. We'll use it to call unknown numbers as a form of a prank, lol..

In the good old days, I also my elder sister staying up all night to take long night calls.

I ed my dad bought an MTN line for 36k. I think it was during the time when GSM was introduced, and the SIM pack was like a disk protector.

I feel Nairaland is blessed to have someone like you @naptu2 amongst us. You really presented it so well and very detailed. Such an intelligent individual. Nice one...
It was the elites and above average people that had that telephone then. We were not so privileged to have it but we had our cousins - the Gbajabiamilas in Okota who had these phones and we would go to their house in the '80s and '90s to receive international calls from our elder brothers abroad. We later started using Cyber cafe's IP phones to make and receive these calls in the late '90s and early 2000s.
What an experience!
Today, WhatsApp call connects the world together like it was all in one place. I wonder what communication would be like in 2050...

naptu2:
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.

No privacy when making calls with this phone ☎️....had to wait to midnight or when no one around to make personal calls then.

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.

Wow ..what an indept analysis down the road of history.

Thanks alot

Galileoteck:
Nigeria of old days is better than Nigeria of recent.

it's so shameful we look to the past as better than present because of rogues in different government

richiemcgold:
I a friend's dad who always padlocked his phone . It was a NITEL landline. The phone was always under lock and no one had the key except the man.

same with my dad Omo the man gave strict instructions

uuzba:
And yet UK and US still maintained their landlines and area codes till date
AND added mobile GSM mobile phone as well.

Nigeria just a funny country filled with people i don't know,how the entered government and killed everything

OAKSFIVEFARMS:
There was a solution to this. Tapping the receiver in a certain pattern would still connect you.

🤥🤥 You mean it?
.. How I wish I could turn back the hands of time

My dad started from P&T retired as a Regional Manager . Good old days of NITEL .

Oh this is a fantastic piece great thread and write up keep it up