MultiChoice: Who Did This to Us?
“Who did this to us?” is a frequently asked question in the Nigerian social media space. It is asked when Nigerians are unable to make a sense of the situation at a given time. The question, I think, has its roots in the belief that some evil force is behind every unfortunate occurrence, something that we have condensed into “no be ordinary eye”.
I am bewildered and I am asking: who did this to us? I am asking because I have reached a conclusion that Nigerians’ default reaction to MultiChoice, the subscription television company, is beyond “ordinary eye”. MultiChoice, of which I quietly stopped being a subscriber to its DStv last year, recently announced tariff increases with effect from 1 May. The company cited the rise in the cost of business operations as the reason for the adjustment, the same cited by all businesses that have increased prices. It was MultiChoice’s third increase in eight months or thereabouts.
What followed, as we say in street lingo, was the “tearing of pant”, the type you did not see when fuel subsidy removal and naira floatation instantly ripped through the finances of everyone, pushing the vulnerable straight to the cliff edge. But over MultiChoice, Nigerians went berserk, tearing their hair out over services they are not compelled to use and, in fact, used by about two per cent of the population. It was apoplexy at its most apoplectic. It is a miracle that there is yet no report of someone suffering a stroke.
Social media platforms have heaved with a witches’ brew of adversarial comments, de-marketing campaigns and xenophobic threats. In the regulatory sphere, a Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal (CCPT), a purely administrative court, issued an interim order restraining MultiChoice from increasing its tariffs. This followed an ex-parte motion moved by one Ejiro Awaritoma, counsel for the applicant, Festus Onifade, who had a similar case dismissed by the CCPT in 2022. I suspect that many Nigerians took what the tribunal did as a judgment and went into self-congratulatory mode. It must also have delighted Dr. Adamu Abdullahi, acting Vice Chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), who should-justifiably- think that he and the commission are entitled to lavish kudos for deflecting public attention from the failings of the government. Rather than hold the government accountable, Nigerians have sunk their teeth into MultiChoice and are unwilling to let go. It is not a new thing, as you would find out.
Before the tribunal ruling, Abudllahi said on television that the commission got a document from MultiChoice in which the pay television firm gave reasons for the tariff review. “At a glance, we saw things like the cost of electricity, running generators, the cost of dollars for spare parts and so on. We’ll go through these items individually and find out how they have affected their operations,” Abdullahi promised.
Bizarrely, he also pledged to involve the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in the proposed price review. The NBC and NCC have no business with price regulation in the broadcasting space. The NCC is actually telecommunications industry-focused. But anything would do when you are desperate to divert attention from your employers’ failings and you have an unquestioning audience.
But that is a small matter. The big matter is why is it only when MultiChoice increases prices that the FCCPC gets its knickers in a twist and goes about stomping in rage? The commission should just be renamed Federal Commission for MultiChoice subscribers. Inflation is approaching 34 per cent, with prices of essential items shooting through the roof. Yet, the FCCPC is in snooze mode. As Dr Yemisi Bangbose, Executive Secretary of the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) asked: “Where was the FCCPC when the Bakers Association increased the price of a bread loaf by over 200 per cent in the last one year?”
This year, Nigerian Breweries Plc has increased product prices three times. Soft drink bottlers have raised prices. Air fares are way beyond reach, with cement prices leaving most people scratching their heads. The cost of education, including in federal government-owned institutions, is spinning out of control.