In the first week of June 2020, Andrew Oginyi, a 46-year-old hotel manager received a mail from his daughter’s school informing him of plans to commence online classes.
Schools were not seen as essential services, hence the Nigerian government during the COVID-19 lockdown ordered them to shut down until further notice. Thus, schools have been closed since March 2020 but the government has recently told administrators to begin the process of working towards potentially reopening within this phase.
The online class was optional and the fee was going to be half of what Oginyi used to pay as tuition before the lockdown.
Oginyi, whose last salary was paid in March, dug into his family emergency savings. On the recommendation of a class teacher, Oginyi bought the daughter the UK used Samsung tablet from a popular vendor on Instagram. Next, he went shopping for a good mobile network.
That’s where the problem started.
“I have gone through three network operators and all can’t stream videos for 30 minutes without going off. One of the networks would not even connect at all. Someone recommended MTN. It is not perfect but it is definitely better because the quality is much improved. But their data does not last,” Oginyi said.
His experience is not far removed from that of Octovia Onochi, a 28-year-old homemaker, who has to sit with her two children – ages 2 and 4 – from 10 am to 12 noon for classes. She recalls how frustrating it was because most of the time the teachers’ network went off and could take about 20 minutes to reconnect.
“Sometimes you will discover that the children only spent 30 minutes out of the 2 hours they were supposed to use and learn,” she said. “The teachers are always looking at a loss, not knowing how to remedy the situation. Several times the school’s website crashed. It was a struggle.”
Morayo (not real name), a student of the Redeemers University said adapting to online class may have been exaggerated. As of the few private institutions that adapted to online learning, Redeemers University resorted to giving out N1000 worth of data per month to their students to alleviate the burden on parents. The data, however, was not only enough for video streaming classes let alone carry the students through the month, poor connection problems were widely reported by many students.
Read more Nigeria’s internet speed crawls behind global average as UK Japan set world record
“We have our classes on WhatsApp, Learn Ap, and Zoom,” she said. “They send us only 1 gigabyte for one month and it is not enough for all the voice notes of 58 minutes and large files.”
The school is currently conducting examinations and Morayo says the 1GB data is insufficient. Her parents now supplement with 10gigabit data. But that has not stopped the School’s website crashing to the point the examinations that usually take less than a month, have seen many more days added to it.
How internet speed works
The quality of the internet is a function of the availability and proximity of enabling broadband infrastructure. The network technologies include a 4G network that enables a high-speed connection in suitable circumstances; 3G network used in a wider area but with much lower maximum speed; and the GSM which has the most extensive network but the data transfer speeds are very limited.
To get the networks working efficiently, you need base stations distributed widely across the country. A mobile phone base station is a transmission and reception station in a fixed location, consisting of one or more receive and transmit antenna, microwave dish, and electronic circuitry used to handle cellular traffic.
According to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), as of December 2018, there were about 30,637 mobile telecom base stations in Nigeria, out of which Lagos alone accounts for 4,734 base stations. Just like in the states, the bases stations are unevenly distributed among the network operators. As of 2018, MTN owned the highest number of base stations standing at 14,715 base stations; with others owning Airtel- 7,966; GLO- 7,244; nTel- 562; EMTS- 148 and SMILE- 2 base stations.
To achieve some level of sufficiency the NCC projects that Nigeria requires additional 41,000 stations.
In its latest report, Cable, a UK-based price comparison website, found that it takes an average of over 7 hours (7.18) to download an HD movie of 5GB in Nigeria. The report placed Nigeria’s internet download speed at 176th of 207 countries measured globally.
At that speed, it means students will find it extremely difficult to stream live videos for classes. Virtual classes have become the way many students stayed connected to learning opportunities while under lockdown.
A United Nations policy briefing in August 2020 noted that school closures and learning disruptions affected 94 percent of the world’s student population; in low and lower-middle-income countries like Nigeria, up to 99 percent of the student population has been affected.
Some 23.8 million children may not return to schooling in the coming year because of the pandemic’s economic impact alone.
At a parents-teachers meeting which this reporter participated in, one of the major complaints of parents was how the poor network did not allow the children to concentrate and make the most of their learning period.
Schools are finally reopening across the country as the government has lifted lockdown on the education sector. Many schools are resuming while some have set resumption dates.
For Oginyi it is a huge relief his daughter gets to go back to physical classes, despite nursing fears of adequate safety measures.
“My daughter’s school has made things flexible. You can decide to stagger the classes, or have her continue online,” he said.
For Onyinye Chukwuemeze, a 33-year-old software engineer whose daughter has already done three classes, the online and offline option is “total chaos”. According to her, teachers are not sure whether to pay more attention to those in class or those online. Her daughter is one of those still learning online.
To improve the speed of broadband internet, the Nigerian government would need a huge investment in infrastructure. The government has kicked off the process since January with the unveiling of a new National Broadband Plan 2020-2025. It is also negotiating with state governors to reduce the charge for Right of Way. So far, about eight governors have announced they will embrace the N145 charge while a few have chosen to waive the fees. The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy says there is no going back and is confident every state will soon announce a reduction in fees.
For parents, the road to a seamless online learning experience may be a long one.
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