Have you been to Ikorodu MTN office located along Lagos Road near First Bank? You will think you are in a slave camp.
This is where MTN compels Nigerians every day to come for sim card registration, renewal or replacement.
As early as 6:00a.m, people had already gathered there to pick numbers written on a tiny piece of paper, one centimeter square or round. It reminds one of the tally number years of Nigerian banking history, when people went to bank with sleeping mats to spend hours or days to be attended to.
Oriwu Sun was at this office recently to observe happenings. We saw how Nigerians were being humiliated, shoved around, forced to sit endlessly in wait for services that are never rendered.
People with different complaints visit the MTN office for several days without being attended to. They complainedbitterly for losing several man hours for a simple exercise. Airtel and other Telecom providers have simplified the process and, in some cases, decentralized.
Whereas, it takes less than 10 minutes to register or renew a sim card at Airtel office takes over 30 minutes to attend to one customer in MTN office.
If the attendants at the MTN office gate and those attending to the hundreds of customers are polite and explain things, the suffering would have been more bearable. There is apparent show of pride and arrogance on the part of some of the staff, who, though Nigerians, treat their fellow countrymen and woman as slaves.
No one can do this in South Africa; no one can try this in the Arab world, where citizens take no nonsense, how much more the advanced countries of Europe and America.
But in Nigeria, MTN’s monopoly is stinks. They mete out all sorts of untoward hardship on Nigerians, like forcing them to subscribe to caller tunes, and all sorts of products, services, etc. that are unsolicited for. You open your hand set and a message pops up. The next careless touch on your button, you are charged N50, N100 naira for subscribing to or accepting one offer or the other.
MTN treats Nigerians, physically seen and those unseen, with anger, unfriendliness and a sense of extortion.
Granted that they are the market leaders in the telecom industry, that should not be the reason they will enslave our people and dehumanize them. Should it take several trips, on different days, and several minutes to renew a sim card? Do people’s genotypes, genes and biometric data change every day to necessitate frequent renewal of sim cards?
Why will only one station of MTN serve the millions of subscribers in Ikorodu division and beyond? Why can’t they decentralize their operation?
MTN why? Why? This 21st century slavery in our country? Stop wasting out man hours, precious time, energy and productivity in the name of registering, renewing and replacing sim cards. We have had enough of this sadistic treatment of our people.
In some climes, consumer could boycott their service provider to protest the inhuman treatment. Since Nigerians are docile, easily fooled and cheated, we appeal to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to intervene and save Nigerians this stress and subjugation in Ikorodu because it is apparent some people in MTN derive joy from this daily flooding of their premises which result in the waste of time, energy and money of their helpless Nigerian subscribers.