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As at December 2017, the 36 states and FCT Abuja accounted for 145 million active mobile lines. In terms of distribution among states, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, had 19.4 million lines, representing 13.4 percent of the nation’s active mobile lines. Ogun State, the nation’s industrial hub, had 9.1 million active lines, implying that 6.3 percent of Nigeria’s active lines were domiciled in that state. Oyo, 7.75 million active mobile lines (5.3 percent), Kano, 7.38 million mobile lines (5.1 percent); and Kaduna State, 6.64 million mobile lines (4.6 percent) are the five states having highest active mobile lines in the country. When combined, the five aforementioned states accounted for 34.7 percent of the nation’s active mobile lines.
They are followed by Abuja FCT, 5.95 million active mobile lines (4.1 percent); Rivers, 5.46 million active mobile lines (3.8 percent); Niger, 5.26 million mobile lines (3.6 percent); Delta, 4.69 million active mobile lines (3.2 percent), and Edo State, 4.64 million active mobile lines(3.2 percent), and together are the top ten states having active mobile lines. They accounted for 52.7 percent of the nation’s active mobile lines as at December 2017.
Nigeria also had 97.79 million active internet lines and the states with the highest active lines were the ten aforementioned states. Collectively, they had 52.6 million lines representing 54 percent of the entire active lines in the country as at December 2017.
Our analysis shows that the nation’s mobile penetration, based on December 2017 data is 75 percent. In other words, 75 out of 100 adult Nigerians had an active mobile line as at last December. Eleven states beat the national mobile penetration rate. Ogun State, with 176 mobile penetration rate, posted the highest mobile penetration rate in the country. Abuja FCT had 167 percent while Lagos, Nasarawa and Edo states had 155 percent; 132 percent and 110 percent mobile penetration rates respectively.
Kwara State’s mobile penetration rate of 101 percent outperforms the national benchmark of 75 percent. Other states with higher mobile penetration rate above the national average are Oyo, 99 percent; Niger, 95 percent; Delta, 83 percent; Kaduna, 80 percent and Abia, 79 percent. River State’s mobile penetration of 75 percent equals the national rate.
Bayelsa, 42 percent; Sokoto, 41 percent; Ekiti,39 percent; Zamfara, 38 percent and Jigawa, 30 percent had the lowest mobile penetration rates in the country as at last December.
Ogun State topped the internet penetration rate at 123 percent compared with the national internet penetration rate of 51 percent. Abuja FCT posted 119 percent internet penetration while Lagos, Nasarawa and Edo states had 109 percent; 90 percent and 69 percent internet penetration rates respectively. Kwara, 68 percent; Niger, 63 percent; Delta, 57 percent; Kaduna, 55 percent and Abia, 53 percent had internet penetration rates higher than the national average. Osun and Rivers states, having 51 percent internet penetration rate each, equalled the national average internet penetration rate.
Ekiti, 27 percent; Sokoto and Ebonyi, 26 percent each; Zamfara, 23 percent and Jigawa 18 percent had the least mobile penetration rates in the country by December 2017.
With this background, BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) attempted to provide more information on the states in Nigeria where the telecoms firms made the most revenue in 2017, through a section dedicated to telecommunications in about to be published State of States Report 2018. By prorating the telecoms sub sector’s GDP, we found out that 60 percent of the nation’s telecommunications sub sectoral GDP was generated through voice calls, while 40 percent was generated from internet services.
We computed the voice calls GDP per capita, which is another way to know how much an individual on the average expended on voice calls in 2017. On this metric, Abuja, Ogun, Niger, Lagos and Nasarawa states topped the list. An average Nigerian resident in Abuja in 2017 spent N128,505.20 in making calls in 2017, translating to N352.07 per day. An average Nigerian living in Ogun State spent N106,970.58 on calls in 2017 translating to N293.07 per day. In Niger State, an individual on the average expended N102, 116.86 translating to N279.77 per day while in Lagos and Nasarawa states, an average resident spent N95, 794.35 and N91, 863.52 per annum on voice calls representing N262.45 and N251.68 per day respectively.
Instead of the population in each state, we adopted labour force to arrive at the voice calls and internet GDP per capita. Agreed that unemployed Nigerians have active mobile and internet lines, the source of the money for the credit cards and internet data of the unemployed Nigerians are their family members, friends and colleagues who are working. Therefore, we used the labour force in each state to compute the daily spend on voice calls and internet usage.
The states with the least daily spend on voice calls are Taraba, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Bayelsa and Ekiti. Daily voice calls expenditure in Taraba State was N91.16 in 2017; Akwa Ibom, N81.44; Ebonyi, N81.16; Bayelsa, N72.73 and N71.01 in Ekiti State.
Similarly, Abuja, Ogun, Niger, Lagos and Nasarawa states are topmost on the daily expenditure on internet data usage. An average Abuja resident expended N249.93 per day on data in 2017. An average resident of Ogun State expended N205.57 per day on surfing. It was N187.44 per day by an average resident in Niger; N184.25 per day in Lagos and N171.11 per day by an average resident in Nasarawa State.
The five states with the least daily expenditure on data usage are Taraba, N56.97; Bayelsa, N51.97; Akwa Ibom, N51.74; Ebonyi, N50.01 and Ekiti, N49.21.
We are not surprised at the emergence of the ten states as topmost in voice calls and internet data usage. Lagos is the nation’s commercial centre and the metropolitan nature of the state requires that frequent calls are made to carry out different business activities and be in contact with the loved ones. The state has the highest number of TV and radio stations majority of which have very active social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Whatsapp with millions of followership.
The seat of power, Abuja, shares some similar characteristics with Lagos. Businesses are booming, a development that is attracting more Nigerians to it who are in search of means of livelihood. The spill over is felt in Nasarawa and Niger States where we have quite a number of satellite settlements whose residents work in Abuja.
Also, reforms in Kano and Kaduna states are attracting notable global brands as was the case of Olam Nigeria which set up the largest integrated farms in Kaduna State last year. The same firm has rice farms which cover several hectares of land in Nasarawa State. The upgrade of Kaduna airport has opened the state to more local and international business opportunities.
TELIAT SULE
