Action Peoples Party, Sim Fubara’s proxy party, the special purpose vehicle through which he is establishing his own hegemony, is certainly full of action, having made a near clean-sweep of the available seats in the 23 Local Government Areas of Rivers State. Twenty two of these seats are now under the control of the APP, an unknown quantity of a political party that has suddenly emerged and taken over control of the LGAs in that state in the last couple of weeks.

It’s the same story from Akwa Ibom State to Benue State- elections conducted by State Independent Electoral Commissions are a charade. They are nothing if not the kind of political magic that only a Nigerian politician is capable of. Siminalayi Fubara, the Rivers State governor, appears to be learning the wrong lessons fast. With this, he must fancy himself as a godfather even if he would like to pretend he is not. In his book, only Nyesom Wike can be a godfather.

For many of his supporters in the Peoples Democratic Party, especially the do-gooders within and outside the state, the so-called elders and leaders that have been fanning the embers of division and fishing in troubled waters while posturing as impartial arbiters, Sim Fubara is the new power house of Rivers State politics. He has had to do this standing over the carcass of the party that brought him to power, and some in that party seem to be happy or, at least, satisfied with it.

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has praised Fubara for standing up for the people and putting an end to political godfatherism in Rivers. Has he not called the bluff of “federal might” epitomised in his sharp criticism of Kayode Egbetokun, the Inspector General of Police, and the entire Police establishment that stayed away from the venues of the election in a feigned and selective obedience of a court ruling?

Others in his camp have spoken in a similar vein of praising him for securing his freedom from an overbearing benefactor and godfather. Fubara is himself savouring the praises and swelling with pride. His natural stoop and slightly raised shoulders seem to be rising some inches more and he is surely getting more confident in his utterances. But is he really free or has he simply exchanged one godfather for several others?

No doubt, he is the godfather of the winners of the chairs across the local councils in the state. Those discerning enough would have seen and heard this in his words to his new followers during the swearing-in ceremony that held, unprecedentedly, on a Sunday, a day after the election, of all the possible days that the new chairpersons could have been sworn-in. Fubara was in a hurry to beat the October 31 Supreme Court deadline for the conduct of all local government elections or there would be no allocation to the local governments still under any form of interim arrangement.

Fubara told the chairmen in very clear terms that none of them under normal circumstances, by which he meant the dispensation he had supposedly just terminated, the “ancien regime” of godfathers symbolised by Wike- none of them he said could have emerged as chair of their LGA under normal circumstances. In his own words: “Na who dash monkey…?” Sim Fubara should have completed that folk sarcasm: “Na who dash monkey banana?” by going ahead to tell the world that he was, indeed, the one, the new godfather, that dashed monkey banana in this case. To go by his metaphor, these monkeys (read chairmen), now created or re-created in his image, must, like true monkeys, simulate his every move and act in his image. They must anticipate his command and do his bidding. He has paid the piper and must now call the tune to which the men must dance.

But he didn’t complete his statement and left his concluding words hanging in the air for the wise among his listeners, especially the chairs, to fill. There might not have been any menace in his voice but only a fool would fail to get the import of his words, a veiled warning to these beneficiaries of his generousity to know where their bread was/is buttered and never forget their benefactor. The governor may have won this battle but has he won the war? The war is still raging with the violence now erupting in the different local government council headquarters which the police vacated upon the emergence of the new council heads.

What Governor Fubara has not been able to say is that he is also the product of a godfather and that without that godfather: Na who dash monkey. Fubara could not have emerged the governor of Rivers but for Wike who also rose through a process of godfatherism. In an old footage that was exhumed by his opponents shortly before the latest election, Wike in condemnation of godfatherism can be heard saying Rivers is not Lagos just as Godwin Obaseki has been saying since 2019.

We don’t know if Obaseki still believes his own words in the wake of the defeat of his candidate three weeks ago. The remark by Wike was made against Bola Tinubu in the heat of his campaign to unseat Akinwumi Ambode as governor. Every governor who rose through the instrumentality of a godfather has gone ahead to castigate the process while erecting their own fiefdom. That was what recently played out in the governorship election in Edo State.

An emerging godfather rails against their benefactor and, sometimes, a so-called federal might. While some succeed in that struggle, others fail. It’s all a matter of strategy. Sim Fubara’s problem is that he was too quick to claim freedom. The patience that helped him to deceive Wike into seeing him as pliant enough to be chosen as governor should have guided him to wait at least two years (time enough to register his presence with the people of Rivers, govern a bit to take over the structures of governance) before showing his hand. But he couldn’t just wait to be his own man.

The consequence is that he has spent at least 12 of the last 18 months he has been in office fighting fire and trying to keep Wike at bay. The PDP structure in that state is firmly under the control of Wike just as a part of the APC bows to him. What happened in Rivers last week could not have been an election. It was a selection and a challenge of its outcome in court might reveal a can of worms. Does a voters’ register of these APP members exist and are these winners in them? Can Fubara stay the course and win re-election on the platform of APP?

I was going through some of my old writings last week and I chanced on a few of them focused on 5G technology. I was still nearly overwhelmed by the great expectations, the amount of euphoria and excitement that heralded the coming of the technology to our nation. It was almost attributed as a silver bullet that could resolve nearly all the problems facing the country.

It will resolve security challenges. It will unleash new businesses and show up very strongly in the development of smart cities and smart ecosystems. Even machines will be able to whisper to each other in conspiratorial relationships and technological advancements. It will provide big pipes for data and pictures, and subscribers can literally do anything with a 5G phones; mind you, only 5G devices, including some people that may be encouraged by Elon Musk to take a vacation at the International Space Station and be watched on earth by proud members of their families. Oh, remember Elon Musk and his Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)?

Even our taciturn President at the time, Muhammadu Buhari, not known for exhibiting any emotions, waxed lyrical for 5G. “5G technology is significantly faster than earlier digital technologies and it provides near real-time communication. This can play a key role in boosting our efforts towards enhancing security across the nation. It will enable our security institutions to effectively deploy robotics, autonomous vehicles, augmented and virtual reality to address any security challenges that we face. To this end, I hereby direct all the security institutions to immediately leverage 5G when deployed in order to beef up security in the country,” the President said.

This was early 2022. Since then three operators, MTN, Mafab and Airtel, have rolled out 5G services and the impact of their efforts on life and businesses cannot be said to be noticeable. Or so it seemed to me last week when I did a little evaluation of the process and couldn’t really nail down anything positively significant.

In March 2024, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, released the industry Percentage Share by the Generations of mobile technology as follows: 2G – 56.97 percent, 3G – 9.04 percent, 4G – 32.74 percent and 5G stands at 1.24 percent. Active mobile subscriptions within the period stood at 219m of which 5G contributed 2.7m.

The mobile technology is categorised in Generations (G). 1G was for voice services only, analogue and wasn’t interoperable across platforms. It couldn’t even be used in a different state without roaming, not to talk of being used in another country. 2G which came with GSM in 2001, introduced digital features and, since then, there has been significant improvement from one Generation to another, with 3G introducing video capabilities and fast data transmission while 4G has taken the process a notch higher. 5G is seen as the esoteric high end with super features to enhance smart life, smart homes and machine-to-machine communications, among others.

This is how the ITU captures 5G technology: “The fifth generation of mobile technologies – 5G – connects people, things, data, applications, transport systems and cities in smart networked communication environments. The networks transport a huge amount of data much faster, reliably connect an extremely large number of devices and process very high volumes of data with minimal delay.”

ITU further submits that 5G technologies support applications such as smart homes and buildings, 3D video, work and play in the cloud, remote medical services, virtual and augmented reality, and massive machine-to-machine communications for industry automation, far above and beyond the capacity of 3G and 4G.

While ITU informs that global 5G coverage has nearly hit 40 percent by September 2023, it says that distribution is uneven. In high income countries, 89 percent of people are covered by 5G networks, but in low-income countries, the service is nearly absent.

The telecommunications dashboard in Nigeria is pretty clear. From the NCC presentation, it is clearly obvious that 2G enjoys market dominance, meaning that for operators to continue to make money, 2G will remain their coveted honeypot into the foreseeable future at a time the technology is being scrapped in some parts of the world.

The ITU observation resonates loudly in Nigeria. While 5G has slowly been introduced to a few major cities, it is very unlikely that some other big cities will see the technology soon, much more,  some less developed  environments whose turn doesn’t appear on the horizon. The joy and great expectations that greeted the coming of the technology are fast fading away. Even the operators are beginning to see 5G as a business for the long haul instead of something that can yield immediate profits.

This is quite opposite of the global trends. Informa, quoting a research from InterDigital and ABI Research, says that 5G is outstripping its predecessors in growth, adding that by 2030, the technology could contribute a hefty sum of $7trillion to the global economy because of overwhelming connections of machines to machines, devices, smart cities, industries, healthcare and hospitality businesses,  and in nearly all aspects of life.

GSMA Intelligence informs that by September 2023, 27 operators had launched 5G services in 16 markets in Africa while some operators were revving up to launch in another 10 markets. North Africa enjoys superior coverage with Morocco projected to do 70 percent (45m connections), Algeria – 45 percent (31m), and Egypt 33 percent (47m) by 2030. South Africa is projected to have 43 percent coverage (58m connections) while coverage in Nigeria will hover at 26 percent which translates to 72m connections.

How much share Nigeria can have of the global 5G pie remains seriously in doubt as the market doesn’t seem to be doing well at all. Prevailing economic realities also don’t even give any reasons for high expectations. Since 2022, as stated earlier, the country has had about 2.7m uptakes with the future not looking much brighter.

An industry source told this writer that even with the above development, most subscribers in Nigeria are on the 2G network which remains a primary source of revenue for the operators. While the source estimated that about 30 cities may have been reached by 5G, it confirmed that rollout remains slow because of cost, while uptakes are limited by the challenging ecosystem which includes high cost of handsets and devices.

The source reviewed the state of the telecommunications industry and the economy, and confirmed that at the moment, operators are losing money. For example, MTN reported a whopping N740bn loss last year, and this writer gathered that the story may not be any different in the current year. The volatility in the Forex market is dealing the operators a heavy blow with some of them scaling down their capital expenditure, CAPEX.

The operating environment is very challenging. The service quality is deteriorating, the source informed, as Tower Operators, who provide strategic services to the operators, are shutting down some sites because of inability to fuel them with diesel as a result of crippling cost. Some of the operators are introducing green energy to power their operations but the process is slow because capital outlay is huge.

Understandably, 5G rollout plans and service uptake are severely challenged. Costs are high on either end and the economy continues to hit with a humbly hammer, making it difficult for people to make purchase decisions. Another industry source lamented that there seems to be general confusion at the moment in the telecommunications industry.

“What do they want us to do,” the source queried.

Under the circumstances, 5G is struggling. The source noted that after paying hefty licence fees ($273.6m per operator), no Nigerian 5G operator can make good returns on investment in the next five to six years, and “that depends if we are able to find appropriate pricing for devices and services because current ones are  not reflective of cost at all.”

5G is like the meat of the antelope that needs proper cooking in order to achieve tasty results. While so many possibilities and revenue yields have been attributed to the technology, an expert suggests that the Nigerian Government needs to provide a good policy and regulatory environment in order to reap from such overwhelming advantages and be part of the global community.