By Cyril Ilayah
Some telecom industry experts and watchers have started expressing apprehension over the 2019 general elections, which is just weeks away, noting that experiences have shown that investors are most times scare of making investment because of the uncertainties that usually come with the election period.
They argued that the 2019 general elections will not be any different from the previous elections. Thus, they believe that investment into the telecom industry, said to be presently contributing over 10 percent to the country Gross Domestic Product (GDP), will be affected.
One of such experts is Mr. Ikechukwu Nnamani, who spoke in an exclusive interview with the Punch Newspaper recently. He stated that the election campaign will clearly affect the telecoms industry like every other industry, but expressed optimism that the industry should be able to pick up from June 2019, when the election must have been over.
“I would say the 2019 election campaign will clearly affect the telecoms industry like every other industry. You know, anytime it is election period, about half of the year is spent on election-related issues and this year also would be affected until June. Though this is expected and not out of place. 2018/2019 should be looked at as a politically unstable year and apart from telecoms, business and everything are affected. But I am very optimistic that once the elections are over, a lot of things would pick up and we would see many new prospects,” he said.
According to Nnamani, who is also the 1st Vice President of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), an umbrella body of all telecom operators in Nigeria, every time there is an election in Nigeria, investors are jittery because they don’t know how it would go.
These investors, he said always wait to know if there would be policy summersault, adding that some invest based on specific government policy and when if they are not sure the policy would continue, it wouldn’t make sense to make more investments. “There could also be electoral violence that would disrupt the government. People are scared about that. All these affect telecom investments in the election year,” he stressed.