| | On 19 September 2003, mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria took the unprecedented step of switching off their handsets en masse. The subscribers took this symbolic step in protest against perceived exploitation by the existing mobile phone companies. Among other things, they were angered by allegedly exorbitant tariffs, poor reception, frequent and unfavourable changes in contract terms, and arbitrary reduction of credits. Among other critical questions, the protest helped bring into focus the following: How is (mobile) technology shaping the democratic momentum in Nigeria? How useful is technology as a mechanism for socio-economic empowerment? Using the boycott as backdrop, this paper provides some tentative answers. It is argued that the boycott ought to be appraised, first, in the context of existing mistrust between citizens and transnational big business in Nigeria; and second, against the background of difficult state-society intercourse which has mostly been characterised by the latter's suspicion of the state's connivance with the corporate establishment. Furthermore, because it gives 'civil society' a combined cause and instrument of protest, mobile phones in the Nigerian context appear to presage the emergence of a new social space of politics and agitation. The paper underscores an ordinarily subsumed 'class' dimension to the protest, illustrating how a struggle about the interests of a section of 'civil society' may have a potential for enlarging the larger 'political space'. |
