Guys,
While looking forward to this Jombo 4 days break from work , was wondering how we all managed communication before GSM came to Nigeria, lets look at the days of Nitels 090,Nitel landlines e.t.c how did you communicate with your friends and family both locally and overseas then? apologies if this has been discussed before,

You just see relatives/friends knocking on your door coming from Katsina to stay for 1month!

it was a custom to raise a delegate to come to lagos from oyo to announce the death of oldies.

Wasn't everything black and white back then too?

it's not even up to a decade and i can't recollect how life was back then.
but i'm sure we all coped well then cos we never miss what we never had

Life was horrible back then, more accidents as people travel around unneccessaily. I went to Kano to see a friend cause his dad died, was told he travelled to Lagos, I boarded another bus and went after him only to be told he has gone to the east on business, all the while he don't know his dad was chilling in the mortuary! Business was damn slow and everything was going on in slow motion.

Before GSM I wrote letters. I enjoyed the activity even more than instant messaging of today because it required deeper thinking. The only drawback was the length of time they took to reach their destinations.
Most places within the south took around a week or sometimes even two days. Sending letters from maybe the East to the North took considerably longer, maybe two or three weeks.

I always sent letters abroad. Those took from one month to two years to hit their destination. I remember receiving a foreign letter dated 1991 in the year 1998. Na then I surrender confess say NIPOST no go die well.

When NITEL was near commonplace it was almost as good as useless because ‘all trunks are busy, please try again later’ was a frustrating jingle Nigerians were forced to contend with.