This is my ode to a book series I loved when I was a little girl and not yet Evilina, the mistress of hot and cold slaps. The Nancy Drew mystery books by Caroline Keene destroyed my eyesight because I couldn’t put them down and would read them under my blanket at night by the ambient light that came in through my window from the passage outside my room. I loved the names the mysteries had like, The Clue in the Crossword Cipher and The Password to Larkspur Lane and I would fantasise about being like her and cracking inscrutable cases once a week. I bring up my childhood heroine now because I feel that I finally have a case that would have been worthy of her skill. It is, of course, the case of Zain, the multi-faced Telecommunications Company.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that Zain has not been singled out for the honour of a slap because they are a crappy service provider. In that, they are well matched by their market contemporaries, MTN and Glo. No, Zain has been singled out because they have turned being a crappy Telecom Service Provider into something more than itself. They have turned it into Art.

As their services have gone from really bad to piss take, I have wondered, why? Why do they think they can get away with this? I began, like Nancy Drew, to investigate the matter and everything began to point in a single direction.

Multiple Personality Disorder.

This condition, now professionally referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is defined in almighty Wikipedia as “a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a condition in which a single person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment.[1] The diagnosis requires that at least two personalities routinely take control of the individual’s behaviour with an associated memory loss that goes beyond normal forgetfulness…” If you have been in Nigeria within the last three years, this should sound familiar to you. A single entity? Multiple distinct identities or personalities? VMobile, Celtel and Zain? Forgetting how to provide actual telecommunication services?

Lets not forget that this telecom provider actually started of as Econet Wireless Nigeria after which it manifested its first personality, Vodacom, which apparently lasted only a month. It may have been the shortest lived of Econet’s multiple identities but it certainly seemed to open the floodgates and I’m afraid its all been down hill from there. That’s right down hill, because with each successively cheesier identity, the Telecom’s services have been seeking newer and lower depths of crappy.

Again, I reiterate that Nigeria’s telecom services industry in general is an exercise in shame and exploitation but Zain! It’s like they’ve pretty much given up on putting any calls through! Perhaps they want to shift sectors? Maybe go into entertainment and event planning? Lord knows it’s the only area in which they seem to be active.

Which brings to mind a sub-mystery in this case; just what are they using all that lovely new Zane cash for? Here are my hypotheses:

1. To alleviate boredom by distracting innocent, Nigerian commuters with their new, garish aquamarine and magenta brand palette and causing random road carnage (because we don’t have enough of that).

2. To compete with Etisalat and Silverbird on who can build the biggest phallic symbol on Banana Island.

3. To irritate Nigerian Internet surfers to death with their absolutely gross and spamalicious banner campaign thereby substantially reducing yahoozey occurrences.

4. To pretend to compete with Facebook with their total joke of a social networking website, Central Station.

5. To release yet another heavily branded and meaningless service (Tru Call) providing yet another excuse for high level Zane employees to party their a**es off at the expense of we the paying customers who are, alas, still yet to receive anything resembling telecommunication services from them since their latest metamorphosis.

Please feel free to append to this list! But back to my original diagnosis. The first step towards healing is identifying and admitting the problem. Zain has obviously been suffering from the Psychopathic problem known as Multiple Personality Disorder (also known within Church circles as “Legion”). I don’t know what could have started it. Most studies seem to support childhood abuse. Who abused Zain when they were Econet? Was it the stockholders? Was it her employees? Was it MTN, the evil competition from overseas? We hope one day, Zain will heal enough to get on Moments with Mo’ and tell us. Until then we must suggest an immediate prescription.

On Slap! we are pretty old school and I think that the Churches will agree with us in our belief that the best thing for a case of MPD is some cold, hard, head clearing Slaps. Time to take your medicine, Zain.

1. For being so crappy that it’s easier to call someone using another service provider than someone also using Zain.
*SLAP*
2. For abuse of branding.
*SLAP*
3. For polluting our internet with your ugly banner ads.
*SLAP*
4. For your stupid new tag line! You know damn well that it is not a beautiful world and not being able to make phone calls is part of the problem.
*SLAP*
5. For the aquamarine and magenta buildings! Why? What did we ever do to you guys?
*SLAP*
6. For Central Station which I have refrained from going into because it will be getting its own post. But it’s still f***ing embarrassing.
*SLAP*

I still have a lot of slap left in me for Zain but my co-writers are restraining me and telling me that it’s enough. I can only say that I truly hope it is.

Let the healing begin.