Love is only a phone call away

OFFIONG ENE. Lagos, Nigeria

Nigeria is taking on a new romantic culture, thanks to the mobile phone.

Love never goes on holiday in Nigeria’s telephone market of 40 million subscribers where social and not only business engagements have changed since the country’s telephone  revolution increased uptake from less than 500, 000 to 40 million in only six years.

Inside corporate Nigeria, businesses are increasingly getting interactive via phone calls and text messages. As a 2006 survey by Lagos based Research Company, eShekel shows, more deals are getting sealed daily via phones in major cities such as Lagos where recurring traffic snarls make tele- onferencing a preferable option.

If business interactions have changed, so too has romance. Social barriers are getting erased as love dates get fixed easily behind the window of a mobile phone. Toby Olajuwon, 37 year old marketing executive for one of the beverage companies in Lagos says he has dated more than a dozen girls in the last two years by simply using his phone to dial numbers of girls seeking for a mate.

A popular fishing site is ‘www.prodigits.co.uk,’ a mobile-based dating site is extremely popular among youths particularly students in tertiary institutions. By IT Edge findings, ‘prodigits’ is a worldwide adult dating site with more than one million members. There are more than 1000 active members registered in Nigeria; 58% are registered as female.


Conservative strongholds including the very volatile northern Nigeria with its strong religious inclination are gradually finding romantic voice behind the mobile phone. Mathew Odion met his date when she mistakenly dialed his number months back. She lives in Zamfara State, the first city in northern Nigeria to introduce Sharia, Islamic rule, about six years ago.

Love grows over time through frequent phone calls and exchange of romantic texts. “I discovered a new picture of the north,” says Odion, adding “I never could have thought that someone behind the veil could be so romantic and poetic with words.”

The love birds have met severally in Abuja and are talking of marriage. Odion says “I would marry her even if it means converting to Islam.” Love found out these two birds through a GSM pipe.

The phone has become the barometer to gauge if love is waning or waxing strong. Frequent calls would mean the romance is thickening and if there are no text messages or a call in a single day, it would only mean that it was intended to be a fling.

Making money

The network operators, smart as ever, have been able to tap into the ‘romance market’ by creating the ‘free night calls’ period to capture the youth market where phone romance is  much likely to be attractive but where the economic means for sustaining such calls is likely to be low.

The catch is to get more subscribers hooked on the network in a market where number is the name of the game. MTN leads with about 14 million followed by Globacom with 12.5 million and Celtel with 11.5 million. Once the subscribers are hooked, they would spend a little money in the daytime to dial their loved ones.

All through the night starting from 12 midnight to 5am, it is not uncommon to find Nigerians on their mobile phones taking advantage of the free night calls to confess love or engage  their loved ones in long conversation to keep the romance burning.

Ten years back, it would have been virtually impossible. There was no GSM operator and state owned NITEL was notoriously inefficient then as it is now. With snail mail, NIPOST, it took  months to get a letter across a distance of 10 kilometers to loved ones.

Today with a network spread across Nigeria’s 36 states, mobile phones have changed the romantic culture in Africa’s most populous country of 150 million. Eric Apanke, an accountant with Zenith Bank, Ibadan branch, says the mobile phone has bridged the gap between him and his woman, a youth corper serving in Gombe State, northern Nigeria.

Ibadan is about 200 kilometers from Lagos and is home to Nigeria’s oldest university, the University of Ibadan.

“I don’t know what I would have done, probably I would have  had to travel all the way to Gombe to see her, and working in the bank makes it even more difficult …I live for her, and she lives for me. So, her voice every now and then inspires me greatly” Says Apanke.


When love is waning

When the calls don’t come and the text messages are not forth coming as well, the relationship is teetering on the edge of collapse, says Mary Ibidapo, a hair stylist in Ikosi, whose date also resides in Lagos, “if he doesn’t call me in a day or SMS, in just one day, then I know something is wrong, but he calls regularly, I am even expecting his call now that’s why I am charging my phone.” She says.

“When I meet a girl for the first time, all I look forward to is collecting her phone number so that I can talk to her later and get to know her better, especially now that you can make free phone calls at night, it becomes so interesting,” says 19 years old Kehinde Johnson who makes friends easily.

Romantic enthusiasts are not only crooning over telephone lines all day and night, they are also sending text messages as well, and for the very shy ones, the phone has boosted their  confidence as they can totally bare their minds to their loved ones without feeling anyway awkward.

It even gets better these days as television programmes, newspapers and magazines make it a lot easier for Nigerians to hook up with life partners or soul mates by just dialing away or  sending a text message.

For Dayo Solaja, a legal practitioner in Victoria Island, that was how he found his heartthrob, Wunmi, two years ago: “It all began with a phone call, he says. “an aunty of mine, who is a match maker, came home one day, and gave me Wunmi’s phone number and that was how it began, she was rude initially but that didn’t deter me, at least there was no way  she could pour pepper water on my face,” he enthused. The couple will be walking down the aisle in a few months time.

But in as much as the mobile phone has built relationships, it has also severed some as cases of infidelity begin with phone calls and text messages as well. “I discovered that he was always sending one Ada girl love messages, soon his phone started filling up with pictures of her, it was so obvious that he was cheating on me, we called it off afterwards.” says Queen Abia, a seamstress in Lagos.

“He was always policing me with his phone every time; where are you? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you pick? When are you coming back? On and on and on.” moans Diana Otu, a student of University of Calabar, who sees the phone as a nightmare.

Whether it is helping to discover love or exposing infidelity, Nigerians have come to see the mobile phone as a tool to “make things happen” as they say in downtown Lagos. For many, love is only a phone call away or may be a text message.

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