Talking, Pinging, Texting unto Death, or Disability … On Highways

By Ihesiulo Grace 11 April 2015 26 No comment

Thirteen years after the Global System of Communication (GSM) made its debut in Nigeria, the talking habit of the citizens has increased remarkably, such that everywhere and anytime, the people just can’t stop talking! GBUBEMI GOD’S COVENANT SNR examines the rising phenomenon, the economic factor and discovered a possible federal legislation in the pipeline to control its abuse.

If words spoken by the individual can be quantified per year, the average Nigerian would have spoken more words in 13 years of gsm evolution than our forefathers spoke in their life time. The good Book says all of creation is held together by the Word of the Creator’s power, and Nigerians have been extremely busy demonstrating this arm of His Omniscience with a consuming passion since the debut of the gsm technology teed off in 2001. Like a virus, deadly and infectious, the frenzy has eaten so deep into the psyche of the nation that Nigerians just can’t stop talking!
From the scavenger, to the ice fish and pepper seller at the market place, the cobbler that doesn’t speak a word of ‘turenchi’, the great number of beggars anywhere you find them, hawkers, house-helps, and to the ruling and the business class, the power brokers at the corridors of power to the sick or dying patients in hospitals etc; everyone is talking as if they will not see tomorrow!
Like the radio talk-stations that chat 24-seven, 8,760 hours all year round, no one is counting the cost, and for service providers who boast of tens of millions of subscribers apiece, their accounts have each become a mega bank unto themselves. “I don’t understand this kind of thing”, voiced Madam Stella Awopegba, a wholesale agent of credit cards at the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) on Victoria Island. ‘If you say hello, or just say emm, you will pay, yet people talk as if it is free of charge.”
A Barrister who shared his amazement narrated to Daily Times how he spent a night at a senator’s house at Apo quarters, Abuja. ‘I was alone in the study and his phone was there. Out of curiosity I checked the credit balance on his cellphone and I found a whopping N50,000 airtime dumped there just for talking.”
Daily Times witnessed a Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) official rebuke a woman in her 40s who hopped out of a bus and snaked across the two multilane busy roads at Oshodi in one swift stream, all the while talking on her cellphone.
“The day motor will knock you down on this road, I will tell the driver to go; na you kill yourself, and nothing go happen, I swear”.
At a crowded restaurant beside the TBS during the week, six men shared a table facing one another.
The man in the middle did not hesitate to take his call while eating, talking into the food before him, with two fellows eating one to his left, another to his right and three people facing him and he did not care a hoot that he was in a public place. This trend has recorded many accidents on roads, in market places, and everywhere.
Sharing his family’s experience on the phenomenon, a clergy man, Iniobong Ukoidem of The Apostolic Church, Ojuelegba Assembly told Daily Times of his wife and her cellphone. “If my wife’s phone rings and our superintendent’s wife is on the phone, everything she is doing will be suspended for hours. If she has visitors, they are on their own; when they tire to wait, they will go; and if she is cooking that time, God help us and the food!” Describing gsm as instrument of good and evil, Chukadibie Maduka, a freelance salesman frowned at an elderly woman who was talking on her cellphone as she boarded a bus at Obanikoro; even while struggling to sit down as the bus moved on, she was talking family matters that pricked the ears of other commuters, and not a few turned their eyes on her, but she continued as though she was the only one in the bus.
“Bode, give the phone to Taiye’, she ordered, and continued: ‘Taiye o; hear the word of my mouth: If I am your mother who born you and gave you my two breasts to suck’, she was hitting her breasts as she said this, ‘Turn your back on that woman immediately.
Laide is the wife we paid her bride price and she is coming to join you next month.’ From her conversation it was clear she was talking to the elder of her two sons somewhere in Europe.”
The law banning motorists from making or taking calls while driving has made no difference; everywhere motorists are seen talking on phone, pinging or browsing while on the steering wheel, begging the question of how we lived as a people before the gsm débuted in Nigeria.
Thirty eight years old legal secretary with a bank on Victoria Island, Abiodun Maurice exclaimed when the question was put to her: ‘Ah, it was not easy, I tell you. We used to write letters home and abroad; even in the city here, letters never arrived destinations on time.’
Maurice still had memories of large mail bags dumped in bushes, dustbins and so on and letters that took many months to arrive at Mainland from the Island and vice versa.
“I remember as an applicant in the 80s when we relied on the postal services and we suffered communication problems.
Many applicants, including myself experienced letters of interview or offers of employment that arrived many months too late. I really thank God for this gsm.”
Another face of life without gsm was recalled by Grandma Comfort Nnaife: “In those days, whatever you had to say to your family member, friend or market partner would have to wait until you saw face to face; sometimes when you were visiting someone, there was no means of letting them know you were coming, and you might get there only for neighbours to say he or she had travelled, or ‘Oh, she just left few minutes ago’ and all your efforts and transport were wasted. Ah, this telephone thing has made life easier, only that some people are overdoing it: if words can finish in somebody’s mouth, many people would have exhausted their words by now!” Everyone in the family has to come to terms with online manager, Kesiena Evhoghene in Alimosho Local Government Area, Idimu, Lagos.
“He comes from work talking on the phone from the gate into the house;
walks past his parents and siblings into his room and may continue talking nonstop for the next hour or more before saying a word to anyone,’ says Glory, his elder sister.
Also, the human resource manager of a transport company, Ms Christy Akpan would talk throughout the long drive from her Ojota office to her estate home. She would continue into the house and never cease to talk even while changing her clothes. The moment she puts the phone down to wash, it rings again and she picks it up, then talks even while in the bathroom, and Sundays are no exception! She told Daily Times there is a standing company law about that: “With bus trackers and so many of our officers on the road, I have to monitor our drivers and movement of the buses all the time; that’s how we check the excesses and pranks of our workforce. And if your phone rings and you don’t pick it for whatever reason, you will be fined a large sum of money, so talking gets the business going and business is talking!”
Daily Times was on time to witness a lady who stepped into an uncovered manhole converted to dustbin of convenience beside the security gate of No. 380, Ikorodu Road hosting a power machine tool company in Maryland, Lagos. She was searching out a number while on the move and had stepped into it.
A gaping hole between Nos. 13 and 15 Ifoshi Road, off Ejigbo- Ikotun Road has seen many such accidents; neighbours say many people have stepped into the gutter partly covered with a plank because they were ether scrolling on their phone or pinging while on the busy walkway.
Further up towards the Iyana-Ejigbo intersection, one Jumoke Azeez lost her expensive Android mini-tablet phone to an okada rider who couldn’t resist snatching it from her outstretched hands as she chatted at the Omiyale bus-stop. All her shouts and feeble efforts to chase the bike drew no sympathy from onlookers.
Another face of the issue is Whatsapp. A household of five adults drew the attention of neighbours at Silva Estate, Idimu in Alimosho Local Government Area recently. The Ghanaian househelp who pleaded for anonymity told Daily Times the cause of the fracas.
“Everybody in the house, including the grandma has a big phone and the whole house would be silent for hours during weekends because everyone is chatting on their phones.’ Daddy was said to have seized madam’s cellphone and she raised hell and high water and nobody knew peace until a compromise was reached.”
Root Of The Frenzy Veteran journalist and historian, Chima Nwafo told Daily Times that Nigerians take every new thing to ridiculous extents, and he delved into history. “The man who amalgamated Nigeria, Lord Lugard, wrote a book he titled The Dual Heritage. In that book Lugard wrote some unsavory things about the black man, Nigerians especially;
derogatory things which some people quarreled with and are still quarrelling with today. “He wrote that when you teach a black man something, he adheres to it and continues doing it as if his life depends on it, without adding anything, or looking at another side of it. If you teach him to dance, for example, he will imitate and celebrate that dance step as if nothing else exists around him.
“That’s what is playing out in this telephone craze. The seriousness and commitment with which Nigerians make and answer phones anywhere and everywhere has turned into something else; even though there exists a law against making or taking calls while driving, motorists, even the police themselves do it; so many have caused accidents: imagine someone pinging while on the steering on a major road; is that not madness? If you don’t ping or make that call while driving, will you die? Will the heavens fall?”
Nwafo suspects that if analysis of the massive calls and chats in the social media is made, a minimal percentage would be important calls like business and family matters, the rest would be social and idle calls.”
Now, if the ban on motorists from using their phones while driving is this difficult to enforce, how enforceable would a legislation against making calls on motorbikes, while crossing express roads or walking on busy walkways and in designated places be realized?
Daily Times took the question to the offices of Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) Headquarters, Ilupeju, Oshodi where the Provost Marshal sighed and conceded that everyone is guilty of the act.
“It is everywhere and many of us are guilty of it. This morning, I had crossed the road before I realised I had been talking on the phone; but it is not a crime by Lagos State law. An act is not a crime unless criminalized by law and this mobile conversation everywhere even on the road is not yet a crime although it is building up to a potential danger.”
Watching this trend building up to a potential national shame, is there any initiative the road safety ministry can propose to curb this problem?
“Well, since this act has gone this far, we may have to write a proposal to the Lagos State House of Assembly and let them consider a legislation to make it criminal. We need to do it for the safety of the individual, even me this morning I did it as I said earlier. It is going to take a lot of public awareness campaign for people to realize it is for everybody’s good.” Would his men be able to check this trend, especially in Lagos area, if the act is eventually passed into law? “If that happens, the traffic authority will not be responsible to enforce the law; it would be the duty of the KAI (Kick Against Indiscipline) division. I agree it will be difficult but at least concerted efforts by all will nip this danger. It is not too late yet.”
Daily Times also sought the view of a legal practitioner, G.P. James, who says the law cited by the road marshal is universal. At his Citadel Chambers in Ajao Estate, Lagos he examined the difficulty in enacting a law against this act. “As far as what we call civil law is concerned, you are at liberty to make phone calls anywhere, even when crossing the road; but like in Lagos State where it is emphasized that you use the zebra crossing and you can do that while taking or making a call, yet we see many people just ignore it.
“So until making calls anywhere is codified, enacted and gazetted, prescribing that the act is an offence and prescribing what the punishment is, you cannot enforce it.” As a lawyer, is such act, if made illegal, defendable in a court of law?
“Making calls just about anywhere is a matter of personal discipline; every person must put a boundary within his own axis. The idea is moderation because social boundary/liberty is very wide.” He pointed at a marble hanging over his chambers that reads, ‘Make time for quiet moments as God whispers, and the world is so loud.’ ‘Some people do not switch off their phones in the night, but I do; in court, they say put your phone in silence, yet some people have a problem with that, but I don’t.
“And it became worse when telephone providers started giving free airtime, all night calls, free megabytes, short message systems (sms) and all that, so people just can’t stop talking”. Barrister James finds it irksome that the frenzy started in the judiciary from the onset. “I had a case with the late Debo Akande (SAN) involving a former LASU vice chancellor.
We were about going on legal vacation and we wanted an adjournment but Akande said no, that the case must go on. We pleaded for a long time before he just managed to adjourn the case to the third week after the legal vacation. And what happened?
Debo Akande went to London and died two weeks after and for years on to this minute we are talking, we have not started that case.
“Debo Akande’s phone was one you cannot get through when you call because it was always busy; and after he died and his wife was using the phone, when you call, the line goes through immediately; when you say, ‘Hello, can I speak to Akande?’
you hear ‘Oh no, Akande is no more’. What I’m trying to bring out is that the phone is not as important as most people want you to believe, but I assure you we can do without all that.” Referring to Covenant University, Otta, the lawyer whose three children have passed through the institution said students are barred from using phones and the children are better off.
“Students are barred from bringing phones to the school and this gives them maximum concentration and results. Yes we hear some of them do smuggle in phones somehow, but because they’re using it illegally, there’s a limited amount of time they spend on phone.’ James equated the trend with every other habit and passion in the human person. “The phone issue is like every habit-forming part of man; if you don’t check it, it rules over you. Like some people get used to snuff, tobacco, alcohol and so on; if they don’t take it they cannot sleep; every human being has an addictive spirit and that is where discipline and moderation is counseled.