There are several reasons why the news of the possible rebound of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) should cheer every Nigerian. One is plain patriotism. Or shouldn’t we be happy that our “national carrier,” if one may use a phrase usually applied in aviation to refer a telecom concern, could be revived after many years of being comatose, even though rejigged and relaunched under the ownership and management of a private investor?

And ours would become like other countries that continued to profit from the services of a national telecom company, with its fixed landlines, fax facilities and whatnot intact, despite having subscribed to mobile telephony, with the result that its citizens are provided with other means of enjoying telecom services than just through the GSM system with its paradoxically liberating and restrictive characteristics.  The other is that it will strengthen competition in the telecom sector. And competition, the bane of monopoly, is the heart that pumps oxygenated blood in business, energising it in the greater interest of the customer. We already know how it led one of our leading telecom companies to introduce per-second billing, ending an exploitative regime of per-minute billing where GSM calls were so calibrated that a caller was billed for a minute even for a call that lasted one second.