Adesanmi: Cell Phones Have Made Life Easy in Nigeria
The Chief Executive Officer, Peace Tidings Ventures (PTV) Limited, Mr. Banji Adesanmi, speaks with Akinwunmi Ibrahim, on rapid growth of technology and its challenges in Nigeria as well as high cost of doing business in the country
Your company has played a big role in the GSM revolution in Nigeria. How will you describe the place of GSM technology in the nation’s economy?
The good thing about GSM is that I don’t know where Nigeria would have been without the technology. To give you an example, I remember when I first started trading; I had to sell a land to buy a phone (land line) those days, NITEL wasn’t even working. If you wanted to get a Multilink line, it’s going to one for N60, 000. If I could remember, Starcomm was N155, 000 because without it, you couldn’t do business and in those days, it was very difficult to call someone prior that you were coming to see him.
Today, cell phone has really made life very easy. Now you can run your office while away through your cell phone, you can communicate while you are away. Now, cell phones havr even gotten to a level whereby it’s not just about communicating alone, cell phone has taken away what most of the other things do. Those days, you need to carry a phone, carry an iPod for music, and carry a camera for taking pictures. I remember that I had to buy a pedometer to measure the number of steps I take, but now with a typical smart phone you have your recorder inside it, you can communicate, you can browse but meanwhile this is something you need like seven or eight different gadgets to achieve. So, I think it is a good one and the beauty of it also is that the average selling prices are coming down. Before, if you want to get a phone that will really meet your needs you needed to pay through your nose. My first Nokia 3310 cost me N22, 000. It was a lot of money but it can barely do more than call, or text. But now at half of that price, and in some cases at one third of that price from N8, 000 to N9, 000, you can get a phone that will call, that will text as well. You can do WhatsApp, you can do Facebook, you can also do internet. So it’s been a good omen. I believe it has really helped us move forward. Look at the recent elections, you may not be in Kano but you know what is happening in Kano. Look at the last experience of the lady that her children were kidnapped. Next minute, everyone was everywhere on social media, it helps. So the acceptance is a good development, the saturation level is very measuring at astrological rate. Before, our company is known for cell phones sales, IT and accessories products, we do phones, we carry like over eight to 10 brands of phones and maybe another four to six brands of ICT equipment, different type Laptop and other kind of accessories.
In what other ways can the GSM boost the economy?
I think the main challenges are still related to the quality of service. The quality of service we still get from GSM product is not where it supposed to be. Sometimes, you don’t even get internet on your phone, so the essence is communication. Sometimes, you want to have a two minutes effective call but you have to do about 10 minutes period and it will drop like five or six times during the period. I believe very strongly now that the quality of the phones itself are increasing, if it can be merged with the increase in the quality of service from the service provider. I also think it will really help.
I remember sometimes when I was in the US, I could make a call for one hour and it would not drop, not even once and that’s even when you are using your headset.
But here, one of the funniest things I always imagine or see about Nigerians call or when people are making calls, they carry the phones and they will be speaking to the bottom of the phone; it’s usually funny because they believe that will increase the volume but once the quality is not good; the quality is not good. And once the service is not good; the service is not good. But I think that’s the major area that needs to be worked on. Once that is sorted out, I think there is overall need to improve the quality of use of GSM.
Since your company has expanded largely within the space of 14 years, is there any plan to list the company on the Nigeria Stock Exchange?
To do that, I think there is a certain stage you have to grow to in terms of turnover, in terms of size and in terms of the visibility and feasibility of what your plans are. Well, we never know for now. There are certain volumes you have to do because when you get listed on the stock exchange, you are going to have more shareholders and you are going to have a lot of expenses and rewards going to the shareholders but when we get to that bridge, we will cross it.
What are your company’s efforts to make sure that the original and quality cell phones are promoted in the market?
What happens is, everybody in the business knows that PTV stands for original and that’s why we are always very reluctant in buying or carrying or selling any phone that doesn’t have backup plans. But having said that, there are different problems that can happen to phones that is not directly a function of the quality of the phone. For example, we have issues with light, or some are caused by power surge. People charge their phones with generators, there is power surge; customers just come here and shout saying your phone has warranty but the warranty is for defect in manufacturers’ packs. The warranty doesn’t cover problem with electricity surge and when the board in the phone is burnt, there is pretty little you can do with that phone.
In fact, we have some issues presently that we are handling that the customers will go and bring police, soldier and some of them go to Consumers Protection Council and we try to make them understand that look, even if you go to the standard service centre of Nokia or Samsung, it is not every phones they take there or swap or even repair, because some phones are irreparable. Some of them do not necessarily mean that the customers are careless but even if the customer is not careless and the fault is not the manufacturers fault, you cannot hold both the manufacturer and retailer like PTV responsible. It takes a while to make people understand this. However, what we usually do to customers is whether it is their fault or not, we will look for a way to ameliorate the losses.
Being a marketer of cell phones, what are the challenges that you think GSM marketers face in cause of doing business in the country?
The number one thing in this business is I’m expected to pay VAT, I don’t collect VAT from anybody; you can’t collect VAT from anybody. I think the major problem for anybody in this business has to do with government fees, charges and taxes in all different shapes and some of them are so repetitive. One of my branches still brought a request today for TV license for a store of 10 square metres. TV license, tenement rate, tax, land use charge, anything you do, even if you want to do a day marketing in front of your office and you have a small one square metre sign board, Lagos State Advertisement Agency (LASAA) officials will come after you.