A couple of years ago, a flight mix-up at the airport in Benin City, Edo State, occasioned the unplanned punishing journey from Benin to Abuja by road. The roads were bad, very bad.
It was the time of COVID-19, and flights were scarce and very unpredictable. There was no doubt that our seats were sold; money for the tickets was never refunded because, at the time, the few airlines able to put a plane in the air simply became lords in a kingdom where there were no rules.
I felt sorry for my wife because she had not planned to make the journey by road. Not only for the sake of insecurity, which has since worsened, but just for the simple reason of one keeping his or her sanity in a world where everything seemed to be caving in.
But there is a reason for everything. In every bad situation, there is a good end just around the corner. Although I had reported communications for a very long time and had even worked in a regulatory agency, my experience that day changed my concept of the industry and I was made to share, although vicariously, in the pain the operators carry daily.
Somewhere in that journey, before Lokoja where a road construction was ongoing, lots of cables were dug out of the ground. That would mean nothing to most people, but it meant a lot to the operators. My wife was the first to draw my attention to it. “Are these not telecommunications cables?”, she asked.
