^^ SMH.

From secondary schol you dondey get crush.

Ashewo omo kekere

Interesting topic.

I remember the incredibly FEW 'chairmen' who owned the so called '090' cellular phones way back in the 90's. Meeeen, that was the ultimate definition of a big boy. . .the 'formica' cell phones used to cost over N100, 000 (in the 90's!!!), and the owners were charged for both making and receving calls! I recall how women (single and married) used to run after such men who were mostly super rich 419ners, 'blood money' men, and all sorts of 'chiefs' back then. Only such men could afford that in those days. And those 090 phones were NEVER put in pockets or pouches; they were permanently glued to their owners' palms everywhere they went. You need to see the awe and adoration on people's faces whenever they saw a man holding a cellular phone. . .such a man was regarded as a custodian of prosperity, and he could literally get any girl he wanted. Those were very interesting times indeed.

IRAPADA:

Back in those days u wil ve to write letter to your parent and waited for weeks b4 reply

McCoy91:

only disadvantage is the dearth of love letters

Remember back in school, my hostel mate had to go and wait for hours at FCS secretariat every Wednesday to receive her finance call though now her husband. And any day the call doesn't come. we r all in trouble in the hostel. that is no friendship for that week

i can recall they (Nitel) disconnected our line just because we are using our fax machine for business. imagine. and also i can remember the 1st girl to use that 33 nonsense nokia in my class it cost 25k with 25k line on 50naira per minute call and trust the boys during one of our final exams they tap it.

@pro01
that levels still dey as people are now more than super glueing their black berry in their hand.

The posts are cracking me up! Will i be correct to say the good old days? as for the phones, you had to dip one finger in the hole and drag down to dial numbers digit by digit

what annoys me most is the fact that i had to travel miles to school just to know if we will be having a lecture 4 that day. to make things worst, you will go home empty brain wasting money, time and, what have you?

it was so terrible,

I remember then when I travelled from Lagos to Ibadan to see my girl. On getting to her house, was told she is in school. I quickly rushed to her school but she had left for home before I got there. Hearing that, I went back to her house to see her and on getting there again she had already gone back to school looking for me when she heard I had gone to see her in school. It was terrible as I was going back and forth.

As far as vila is concerned, twaz d era of letter writing and you had to wait until someone is traveling which might take months.

I was missing my girlfriend in those days and I decided to pay her a visit at her place.On getting to her place at surulere around 11:00am,I was informed She went to festac town. I felt bad and because i was missing her badly,I went in search of her at festac by walking from one street to another hoping Iwould see her by luck .I did this for almost 3 hours fruitlessly and later went back to wait for her at her place.She eventually came back around 9:30 PM.

every face me- face house your room had a small note pad by the door, so when you turned up at your friend's house unannounced, you would leave a note usually starting ' I called but met your absence'.

we found it shocking that apparently abroad you had to phone your brother before you came to his house, as we didn't have telephones in Nigeria you just arrived unannounced whether from the village or another part of town, we considered this part of our culture. If your brother was not home, you waited.

Now everyone will call or text first, including your aged mother before arriving at your house.

Could remember the period a few months before the roll out having to make a four and half hour round trip from the Ranch to the exchange at Ikom just to call headoffice in Lagos. The long queue stretches out as early as 5am and as your turn approaches your heart is pounding that the spiritual dialling tone dosen't trip up on you of the boss is in the john.

Blasting past on my way to Abuja right now and replying this thread on my palms. Been on the field for a couple of weeks and as far as the net is concerned haven't missed my laptop one bit.

Wish we had a museum of contemporary ICT history where we could confine Nitel and those dingy 'cybercaves'. Sorry - cafes.

i remember back in those days when the business minded people hang around the phone booths with their nitel cards waiting for customers. their charges was in units then. anybody with an international number is always a big catch cos it's more money. they will ask u whether it's int'l or within. int'l costs more than locals u know. they are more happy when u dish out ur paper containing the phone numbers u intend calling.

lekanjohn:

I was missing my girlfriend in those days and I decided to pay her a visit at her place.On getting to her place at surulere around 11:00am,I was informed She went to festac town. I felt bad and because i was missing her badly,I went in search of her at festac by walking from one street to another hoping Iwould see her by luck .I did this for almost 3 hours fruitlessly and later went back to wait for her at her place.She eventually came back around 9:30 PM.

o boy u get time o!. u just wasted about 10hrs looking for ur girl. after u come see her wetin come happen? i guess the story continues,

@crackhouse, that was when men were boyz .

Hmmm! Mine is different, those day without handset, for me to tell my mummy from lagos to osogbo dat i must pay my sch fees i'll need to write her letter & i'll be waiting 4 who is going 2 osun state 2 deliver my letter 2 her. No bi small stress my people!

Before before you actually need to keep tapping your telephone before you could get a dial tone.
If you want to make a regional call you needed to dial 192 and ask the operator to connect you(NITEL was kinda efficient that time).

Later on they moved to the digital switches and all the yawa began.
You had to pay up and keep begging the technicians to fix your line if it cuts.
I know a NITEL technician in Kano in 1992 that rides a Honda Hala 92 model,his name is Akin, d guy na BIG BOY.
If rainy season come like dis,he dey live large because all lines mess up big time during the rainy season.

Even when the GSM came,NITEL made sure interconnection was done in their office. Each PTO had to build a PTO room inside NITEL's premises.
You will not believe that many times when i went to do maintenance checks for my company,the guard will first ask for egunje before he opens the gate.
Then the keys were deposited at the managers office and you will need to sign countless papers before they are released (na your key o )
Later on when nemesis started catching up with them,they will not turn on the generator because there is no diesel. Therefore whenever there is no light at NITEL,all interconnect calls would not go through. At some point we(PTO's) used to contribute money to fuel NITEL's generators (whether officially or unofficially i never knew)
When the PTO's saw that NITEL is dying and wanting to get as many death partners as it could they started shunning NITEL and started interconnecting individually and that is how it is now. Glo is the interconnect hub in most places.
RIP NITEL

Hopefully we will live to write the same thing about NEPA-PHCN.

Those days when the NITEL call card would instantly deduct almost half the amount the moment your brother's line rings from abroad.

NITEL guys would always ask if you brought a vehicle( You would need to drive them to your house to fix your landline - "No motor to carry ladder" ) LOL

I remeber I used to go and wait at a neighbours sitting room for about 2hrs to receive my mum's international call,

Our ppl are known to be travelers. It's a tears of joy seeing somebody you had not seen for past 7 - 15yrs. Some ppl would come back and start asking and tracing their house with their surname/fathers name. They would travel and remain 'incommunicando' for yrs, that you would be wondering if they were still alive. Once somebody like that comes back, the whole neighbour,clan, town, village would be coming to see him. The mother or siblings would spend up to 5hrs telling him how things had been going since he left. When my uncle came back from lagos with mercedez 230, stuck with him and was enjoying some free ride. Mehn!! Those days were the bomb!

Hmmm! Mine is different, those day without handset, for me to tell my mummy from lagos to osogbo dat i must pay my sch fees i'll need to write her letter & i'll be waiting 4 who is going 2 osun state 2 deliver my letter 2 her. No bi small stress my people!

Shoolar:

Hmmm! Mine is different, those day without handset, for me to tell my mummy from lagos to osogbo dat i must pay my sch fees i'll need to write her letter & i'll be waiting 4 who is going 2 osun state 2 deliver my letter 2 her. No bi small stress my people!

eyaaa. you know the funny thing is that we were able to live with it and manage the situation very well. Now it has become history.

very funny posts!!i remember the first time i handled a cellular phone(nitel 090)my uncle was charging it and i started playing with it.the battery charging symbol stopped moving and the light went off!oh boy i think sey i don spoil the phone and i was sweating until my uncle came back and said it was ok!lol

who remembers phone tapping, tap 10 times for 0, tap five times for 5, tap twice for 2,

the long queues at Nitel booths were not funny, area-boys started hanging around them for their ungodly activiyties.
u dare not gist and laugh too long(even with ur own money) cos soooo many people are waiting for u to finish, or they will start grumbling behind u. lol
the distance u travel to get a working phone booth is another gist
thank God for GSM

yack!was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo f.ucked up!no one was on my beck and cal!
No PUN intended,

Nigeria has definetly come a long way in short space of time. I remember going to Nigeria for my Dad's funeral in 2000 and being frustrated at not been able to use my UK phone to call and get things done as I would in England but having to travel instead and wait around. It was so frustrating and time consuming. When I went back there in 2003 the GSM era was in full swing and the change was amazing.

gone are those days without Gsm , Mum write a not staple it and instruct me to go and give my uncle in lagos , and i will wait for reply ,

that's why student of nowadays cannot write up to 450 words in their waec and neco essay writing. ask my bros who are specialist in writing love letter. fulscap sheets they sell well well in those days