The state of communication in the village is quite often relegated to poor telcom infrastructural maintenance. In most rural communities Electricity is somewhat prominent compared to the urban shift.
Just recently, I was opportune to visit my ancestral home in Ofabo, Kogi State, Nigeria. The major Telecommunication infrastructure I could pin point to — is the shallow presence of GlobalCom Nigeria but in the vast majority of times the network isn’t efficient due to its proximity to the town.
Ofabo is a town in Igalaogba district of Ofu Local Government of KOGI State, Nigeria. Politically it is in Ogbonicha ward, Ofabo is mainly inhabited by Emodu people. A very peaceful place, it has a Community owned Secondary School, Government public Primary school and a host of private primary schools.
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Ofabo as a town is bordered by many outpost autonomous communities numbering upto 40 with a population of approximately over 400,000 people with diverse cultures and economic activities. It has a big market that caters for the economy running of the town and it’s environs while the indigenes are predominantly farmers with few of them into petty trading.
From my interactions with Locals, I observed there’s a lacuna in the communication configuration of that area, the network setup in the Community is being subjugated to a pattern switch more like a job resumption window (Time shift 8—12). Once its past schedules the telecom network facilities goes off.
Coming through Alloma via Ijabe a 7km stretch to Ofabo, there’s presumably high concentration of the 3 dominant Telecom network infrastructures; MTN, GLO and Airtel but due to the hilly terrain at Ofabo, the network wave isn’t strong.
Upon conducting oral examination, it is crystally clear that the major reason why there’s GLO network outage in Ofabo is due to the fact that the site maintenance personnel engaged in arbitrary conduct— whereby the bulk spare of Diesel allotted for operations is being diverted for personal gains.
I, witnessed a motorcycle accident involving a juvenile on the eve of Christmas— like you all know it’s a holiday season and some facilities goes for recess, if not for the quick intervention of some stakeholders, the inefficient communication gap would have led to the untimely death of this promising young lad because health personnel could not be reached.
Locals here believe it’s an orchestrated effort targeted at benefiting some few, one even said; “In Cities ‘You’ people scout for Light i.e Electricity while here in the village ‘We’ are being faced with poor and inefficient TelCom network configuration”.
Some few years ago, MTN wanted citing a Solar Base Station but the project has been relegated to poor execution. The absence of competition is breeding room for non performance which GLO enjoys monopoly therein.