Every Household Its Own Government by Daniel Jordan Smith;

Author:Daniel Jordan Smith;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

“The Fire That Consumes Money”

In southeastern Nigeria, Igbo-speaking people dubbed cell phones oku na iri ego, which translates as “the fire that consumes money.” This popular local name reflected ordinary citizens’ frustrations with the perceived exorbitant costs of cell phone calls. New linguistic turns of phrase and innovative social practices that evolved with the proliferation of mobile technology built on people’s aggravation over the strain of cell phone ownership, but they also indicated the degree to which cell phone culture had taken root in everyday life.

Nigerians quickly adapted their cell phone usage to suit their economic circumstances, and some aspects of the service plans offered by the country’s main providers were clearly designed to attract and retain customers who could not afford to make a high volume of phone calls. For example, the Short Messaging Service (SMS) was extremely popular in Nigeria early on and by 2005 typically cost only 15 naira (about $0.10) per message. Text messaging was particularly popular with younger customers, and it generated its own lexicon of abbreviations, an economy of language that also became part of Nigeria’s youth culture, as it has in other settings.3

Text messaging became a common way for Nigerians who could not afford regular phone calls to communicate using the new technology. But for older people, and even among young folks, using text messages too frequently without also calling could be interpreted as a sign of reluctance to spend money on a particular social connection—reflecting either stinginess or a lack of deep concern, or both. As a consequence, although text messaging was (and still is, to a considerable extent) extremely popular, people were careful not to rely on it too exclusively, lest they become objects of criticism. In times of economic hardship, the willingness to spend money on a phone call was evidence of interest or commitment to a relationship, whether it was a friendship, a family tie, a business partnership, or a romance (cf. Archambault 2013, 2017 for Mozambique). The previously mentioned “NFA” critique of men who utilized MTN’s night-calling discount was but one instance of how calling behavior was socially evaluated.

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