In September 2024, posts circulated on X claiming that Nigeria was on its way to producing its own phones and laptops with a $3.25 billion investment. Yet, the conversation about Nigerian-made phones has come and gone over the years, with little clarity on their presence in the market. FIJ visited Computer Village to find out about these phones and where they went.

On a good day, Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos, bustles with many people. The Wednesday I visited, March 12, to find Nigerian-made phones, particularly Imose and Afri-One, was no exception.

Computer Village is the perfect place to start after being dubbed as the largest accessory market in Africa. The market is a part of the Computer and Allied Products Dealers Association of Nigeria (CAPDAN). This is bigger than the “phone hub” most Lagos residents and Nigerians call it; it is a vast ecosystem of tech commerce.

On this day, a dozen activities happened at once. One common sight was young men with baggy jeans and coloured tops lining the front of tiny spaces rented out as shops.

Someone had once mentioned years back that Computer Village is one of the most priced business centres in the country.

These young men are the first point of contact for anyone who enters Computer Village. They line the streets calling, tugging, pulling and dragging while swearing to solve every one of your market needs. They get in your way, mouthing, “Fix your phone or swap it?”, “iPhone or Samsung?”, “New laptop? New phone? Follow me, I have what you want. Just come with me.”

They do this on-the-spot patronage in the Nigerian Pidgin, a language widely spoken as a modified form of the adopted English language. But these young men also have a reputation, they could swindle the daylight out of you and leave you groping for reality.

They were not my target, but I would soon find out that even their expertise could not help in finding Imose, Afri-One, ITF or any of the Nigerian-made phones.

In June 2021, many news outlets reported that ex-president Muhammadu Buhari was presented with the first cell phone made in Nigeria. The phone, ITF Mobile, was presented to him by Adeniyi Adebayo, the then Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment.

Adebayo told Buhari at the time that ITF Mobile, including eleven others, were indigenously made and was a product of the Model Skills Training Centre of the Industrial Training Fund, an agency under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.

However, a media fact-check revealed that ITF Mobile was not the first phone to be called “Nigerian-made”; there were others, especially Imose Mobile and AfriOne, which had existed more than four years before Buhari held the cell phone in his hands.

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FINDING IMOSE AND AFRIONE

Tobilola Olatunji, my guide in navigating the maze of stores in Computer Village, walked fast ahead of me. He was more familiar with the unmarked paths and knew where to turn at every bend or curve.

He knew the stores likely to sell a diverse range of products and the ones unlikely to do so. He suggested we start with Slot System Limited and Micro Station, popular phone retail stores with many brands up for sale, but I disagreed.

I had combed through Slot’s website, and nothing like the Nigerian-made phones came up. So, we started with the smaller shops and soon found out how unlucky we could be.

At the first shop, sitting by one of the many tiny paths, a trader sat outside his small container, shielded by an umbrella. He looked tired in the hot weather but managed to give a response when we asked if he had AfriOne or Imose phones.

He looked blank for a minute before shaking his head in the negative to say, “They don’t produce them anymore. They are now out of the market,” he said.

At the next shop, just a few feet from the first, the vendor wanted to know if what we wanted was a smartphone or a featured phone (another name for button phones). We explained that we wanted either of them and with another shake of the head, we were dismissed.

It was like this at the third, fourth and fifth store. The vendors all said they did not sell the products and did not plan to stock them.

However, from conversing with these vendors, I got to understand that the tablet version (for kids) of Imose was more popular in the market. They egged me on and claimed the next store might earn me my wish.

‘NIGERIA LACKS WHAT IT TAKES TO MAKE A FOWL, NOT TO TALK OF A PHONE’

At the sixth store, a tablet store in one of the storey buildings in the cramped market, I found a tablet store. The store boasts of the latest devices suitable for children under the age of 10.

In there, I found the store owner who first laughed softly when I told him I was seeking to buy Imose.

“Imose? Here? We don’t have it,” came his response. I pushed further, “But do you have any Nigerian-owned tablet?” Then he laughed harder.

“Nigerian-made devices? You must be kidding. Can Nigeria produce fowl? Can Nigeria manufacture a phone even when it imports fowls and goats? We are not yet ready, people don’t even come to my shop to ask for these products,” he told FIJ.

“There has never been a Nigerian-made phone. If anybody tells you otherwise, that person is a big liar. Just because a certain product is presented as Nigerian does not mean it is actually made here; the country of production should be indicated on it. So why call it Nigerian-made when we don’t have factories to manufacture or even assemble it here?”

When I mentioned to him that the ex-president was presented with a Nigerian-made phone in June 2021, he told FIJ it was all fake and that Nigeria lacks the electricity supply to even enable phone manufacturing companies to thrive.

“It is all fake. In Nigeria, we are not ready for such things because where would we even get the electricity to manufacture them? Which company would want to establish a factory here?” he said.

“In the end, the so-called Nigerian-made phone or gadget will be so expensive that people won’t be able to afford it. That is why I say we are not ready to have our own products.

“Even in ordinary farming, we still struggle because there is no government support. The Fulani herdsmen do not allow farmers to cultivate their land, and Boko Haram is disrupting the fishing business in Maiduguri. This has forced us to import even basic foodstuffs. Now, tell me, how can we afford to produce gadgets?”

Olatunji and I left his shop. He asked FIJ not to include his real name in this report.

JULIUS

After a few more wanderings through passages so tight that the shoulders brush and bodies are forced to press against each other with every step, we found Julius.

Julius has a medium build and an average height; his fair-complexioned skin catches the light effortlessly, with a glow settling on his cheeks as he responded to my questions.

He has been a regular in the market for nearly two years and has been working at his store for only two months but has never heard of Imose, AfriOne or any other gadgets dubbed “Made in Nigeria”.

When I first asked him if they sold any phone that was made in Nigeria, he responded in the affirmative and proceeded to show me a Pop 8 Android smartphone produced by Tecno Mobile, one of the largest phone exporters in Nigeria. In 2024, it was rated as the market leader among mobile device vendors in Nigeria, with a market share of over 25 per cent.

The mobile phone he showed me read, “Only for Nigeria Selling” which means it can’t be sold anywhere outside the country.

He told FIJ he had never heard of Imose and AfriOne and that his store never had it for sale.

“We don’t stock these brands you just requested. People do not ask for them. We only sell Infinix, Itel, Samsung, Redmi and others,” he told FIJ.

“All the while I have been visiting and working here, this is the first time I have heard of a Nigerian-made phone. The only thing I know of is phones made specifically for Nigerian consumers.

“We know all these phones and refer to them more as Nigerian-made phones because you can’t use them outside the country. However, I am not sure of anywhere else in the market where you can get these phones.”

After we left Julius, we asked a few more vendors and the boys in jeans and tops hanging around but even then, we did not know where to get them. The closest I got was a vendor who had her wares out in the open asking what type of Imose or AfriOne phones I wanted. She said she had the featured phone instead of the smartphone but it was not available on her wooden makeshift store at the time.

“I will only have to go and bring it for you,” she said

At Micro-Station, one of the popular retail phone stores and an equivalent to Slot, there were many foreign phone brands on sale except Imose and AfriOne.

The sales representatives dismissed us with shakes of their heads saying they did not have what we were looking for. This was our eighth stop.

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FINALLY! ONE IMOSE FEATURED PHONE

For our tenth walk-in and last stop, we decided to walk into Slot, where we found a sales agent who knew an agent who used to sell Imose phones.

She walked briskly before us as she took us back to Micro-Station, one of the stores we had earlier visited. She handed us over to another agent called Blessing.

Blessing, in turn, called another person, who said they had Imose phones, but only the featured ones and the least expensive ones sold for N16,500.

This was shocking as button phones sell less than that in the market. In fact, Blessing told us that when she used to work with Imose a few years back, the phones only sold for N5,000.

WHERE IS IMOSE?

After leaving the market, my task was to track and find Imose as it was the most prominent Nigerian product mentioned in the market.

On Facebook, Imose Mobile has an active presence and a scroll through their page shows an existing partnership between the company and the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).

According to the Facebook post, Imose had recently celebrated its tenth anniversary and has moved from manufacturing phones to building laptops.

This was followed by a visit from Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, where he reemphasised the government’s support for the indigenous phone manufacturer.

The brand says that it has “grown from importing devices to assembling them locally”, touting it as a leading phone maker not only in Nigeria but also in West Africa.

In its many adverts, the brand promises affordability and durability for a Nigerian-made phone. Its website shows that Imose Mobile has produced laptops, smartphones, tablets, routers, MiFi and other electronic gadgets.

On Thursday, FIJ made many attempts to reach Imose Mobile for an interview on the local phone supply chain and their penetration of the market, but they didn’t respond to FIJ’s email, six phone calls and two WhatsApp messages.

Shifau, a customer care representative who initially responded to one of the messages on WhatsApp, did not respond to subsequent messages.

After a long day of searching in Africa’s largest accessory market, I left with a simple truth: Nigeria has companies that claim to make phones, but most Nigerians have never used them, and many have never even heard of them.