"ND" AND THE INTERNET

By Omoseye Bolaji

It was “peak period” inside the internet centre, as it were. A cauldron of frenetic activities! Here we were in the heart of Bloemfontein city in one of the internet cafes.

As usual the young ones, the students, were in the majority here now, adolescent boys and girls in school uniform chatting and gossiping whilst savouring the wonders of the internet. Eyes glued on the screen of the computers; intermittently the young ladies in particular checked the latest goings-on on facebook – both on the computer screens and their mobile phones.

Apparently, these days the young find it much easier doing their homework and assignments with the help of the internet. Showing off their knowledge, the pupils luridly made suggestions to each other: “No, try Google!” “Wikipedia is better!” “I still like yahoo,” etc.

I could hardly hide my smiles; perhaps I was in a tolerant mood! But it struck me powerfully how the youth have taken all these scientific marvels in their stride; how they take it all for granted. Whilst the truth is that the world has existed for thousands of years, yet incredibly things like world wide web, internet are just about 20 years old in human existence!

Now virtually everybody, especially the youth take advantage of this technology every time, sending a plethora of electronic messages hither and thither; be it via emails, facebook, twitter, SMS (text messages) etc. I shook my head, remembering that not so many years ago – before the internet became popular in Africa too – as a roving journalist I used to send my reports via telephone (eg from stadia during football or rugby matches), as internet was very scarce then.

“ND”- the owner of the internet cafe now entered, surveying the goings-on inside his internet cafe. He greeted me very well – after all we are both Nigerians and have been friends for years and he moved on to his office.Ah, ND! A very important man indeed, though the hordes of youngsters here at his internet cafe would not know this.

ND, a proud Igbo man to boot, was the first person to popularise the internet in the whole of Bloemfontein city. Almost 10 years ago he opened his internet café and charged incredibly cheap prices for the masses” to come and use his services. To complement this, he went out of his way to teach people the wonders of the internet at a time ignorance was rife in this wise even amongst the most educated people.

Within a few years other people were copying the pioneering efforts of ND, all over the city; opening internet cafes and trying to keep the prices down. Gone now were the days when black people in particular had to more or less “travel” to white areas to use the internet at very exorbitant rates. That was/is the legacy of ND!

And he was not alone. In other South African cities (and towns), Nigerians over the last 10 years have contributed greatly to popularising the internet – in well known cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, for example. Till date, many of such internet cafes belong to Nigerians; affording cheap access to the internet for large numbers of people; and to boot, often opening their offices to the public at unusual times (eg late into the evening, and on Sundays.

Hence we now see a situation where hordes of people, including young scholars, flood these internet cafes. Yes they are taking so much for granted; but that is part of the effervescence of youth. They take it all in their stride!