MTN and Etisalat vs Me

I ported from MTN to Etisalat about a month ago. That isn’t news.
I’m naturally a loyal person – I could have broken a few hearts but it’s nothing personal just business. After all I have been using same drycleaner all my professional life and the thought of dumping them, even when I moved to the other side of town, is painful.
But MTN had it coming – the data service doesn’t work well. Voice is trashy; and then they started stealing my money. It got so bad they could have done better if they robbed me at gunpoint in daylight or nighttime depending on what’s convenient, not for me, but for them.
So on a bright Saturday afternoon, my daughter playing the dutiful sidekick, we marched down to Etisalat and got the freaking phone ported.
It felt good.
Only for a while.
You see, Etisalat works but they are darn expensive. How I managed to go through double what I used to pay monthly at MTN (less the robbery) still baffles me. Also the data varnishes so fast I turned my phone bottom up to see if it’s leaking data. At least that should have formed a puddle, somewhere.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, an evil thought is forming though. I could get a dual SIM phone and use an Etisalat for the data and MTN for the voice but the thought of porting back isn’t pleasant. You see, I have some little imps working in my office who are going to jeer on toadstools if I dare port back to MTN. I’m sure those guys are getting paid to make my life miserable. That’s an aside.

Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adédèjì is the founder of Lendsqr, the loan infrastructure fintech powering lenders at scale. Before this, he led Trium Limited, the corporate VC of the Coronation Group, which invested in Woven Finance, Sparkle Bank, Clane, and L1ght, amongst others. He has almost two decades of banking experience, including stints as the Divisional Head of Electronic Banking at Fidelity Bank Plc. He drove the turnaround of the bank’s digital business. He was previously responsible for United Bank for Africa Group’s payment card business across 19 countries. Alongside other industry veterans, he founded Open Banking Nigeria, the nonprofit driving the development and adoption of a common API standard for the Nigerian financial industry. Beyond open APIs, Adédèjì works deeply within the fintech ecosystem; he’s the board chairman at Paystack. Adédèjì is a renowned fintech pundit and has been blogging on technology and payments at dejiolowe.com since 2001.