I drew from my impressions of the Nigerian ISPs I visited in Lagos, as well as my identical impressions of American ISPs, to coach my colleagues at UNILAG, Ahmadu Bello University, and Bayero University, Kano.   All three of these institutions were -- and perhaps still are -- contemplating setting up a satellite with connections to the outside world and then becoming an Internet service provider for their community.

I pointed out three potential problems with these plans:

• The first potential problem being that their satellite bandwidth was going to be terribly expensive and highly valued.  If they turned around and sold it to others, they could find themselves in the position where the private side of their business would be competing for bandwidth with university researchers and students – and there would be little incentive to decide in the favor of the academics. 
  
• Secondly, managing an ISP takes a lot of time and energy, and a certain level of devotion -- if not fanaticism -- that's rarely found at a low-paying state institution.  It is hard already, as Nigerians would say, to keep someone “on seat.”  But those subscribed to an Internet service provider expect to get service twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and expect to have their phone calls answered when things aren't working.  Providing for this at a state institution could be inordinately expensive. 
  
• The third reason I coached against this is the risky technical and financial burden.  Internet service provision calls for the installation and maintenance of reliable telephone service (a very expensive and problematical proposition when considering NITEL.)  As well, it requires the installation and maintenance of specialized high-end equipment including modems, modem pools, routers, etc. (as well as their subsequent and unavoidable upgrades.)  This whole enterprise is an expensive proposition.  If NCC licensing becomes more liberal, the number of Nigerian ISPs is bound to grow and the competition is going to become more intense.  The universities will have to dedicate some of their best technical staff and resources to a proposition that may, in the end, not be profitable.  With the new worldwide satellite Internet technologies coming into service in the next couple of years, it's anybody's guess how profitable the ISP business will be. 

However many of these universities, after being starved for cash for years by military governments, are forced to look for ways to bring in revenues to support their more academic endeavors.

While there's something peculiar about the university being in the situation of having to sell its basic infrastructure in order to provide for more basic infrastructure, this entrepreneurial sentiment is infused in virtually every new institutional mission.  In many situations, there’s no accounting for the money that never actually sees the bursar's office and winds up in individuals' pockets along the way.  Given their perpetual inability to pay their staff reasonable salaries, administrators not only “look the other way,” but try to steer more business to their valued faculty members. 

In light of all this, I think potential donors need to be cognizant that there will be very strong economic forces compelling the universities to sell rather than utilize their Internet connection.  If funds for such connectivity projects are to come from outside donors, I believe donors are going to need to include some measures for verification and certification to insure that the Internet connections are used for bona fide administrative and academic purposes.

I coached the universities to think about the possibilities in another light.  Not simply because I wanted to dissuade them from selling their bandwidth, but because I do believe that they stand a greater chance -- and a more sustainable chance -- of using these connections and this technology to make money by offer training and certificates in the development of networks and the use of the Internet.  They would build upon their own knowledge base, train yet another cadre of technicians, and further their traditional roles in Nigerian society.

In fact, universities are in a unique situation in this respect.  They need to secure Internet connections because they are academics and they need access to the overwhelming wealth of information on the World Wide Web.  But they also need to set up classrooms with networked computers so they can teach about networking and the use of computer applications.  And they need to set up lecture halls with projectors and connections to the Internet so that instructors can use these technologies to teach.  And in order to support all this, they need to build up within their own walls a great deal of expertise at how to use the Internet and how to install and manage networks. 

My suggestion is that they take all of this necessary infrastructure and use it, say on weekends and evenings, to offer certificate courses for the general public or specific skill-building courses for area private and public sector partners.

Using the example of our June training in Jos last year, I was able to demonstrate how we put on a four-day world-class training session, spoiled the attendees with handouts, food, and drink, rewarded all the classroom assistants handsomely, paid each presenter the equivalent of a month's wage, and still turned a N300,000 profit.  (That, in Nigerian terms, is a large sum of money.  It got my audience's attention!) 

I invited them to hold that thought and expand upon it.  I encouraged them to set up their local area networks, to set up the satellite connections, to install their networks, and then to use these resources to offer training to the public and private sector in a way that would not only enhance their pocketbooks, but also increase the skill level of their staffs as well as fulfill the university’s prime mission: to educate.