It is a long vacation season in Nigeria and so many students are about to have it really good. School results at this period are not the regular results because they determine whether a student is actually graduating or just attending their school’s graduation ceremony. Parents wait to either congratulate their kids or remind them that all the students that were called on stage “don’t have two heads”, then proceed to make their holidays annoying.
For the students who excel properly, there are a number of things the normal Nigerian parent is known to promise them. Here’s a shortlist:
An Actual Vacation – It’s called a “long vacation” for a reason. Schools often expect their students to engage in some fun activities or take a trip, but sometimes, parents act like they don’t understand that fact. English teachers are the best at creating a reminder for the students. If you went through school and never wrote an essay on “how I spent my holiday”, then your English teacher probably missed the memo. Parents who are proud of the achievements of their children will try their best to take them somewhere nice, even if it is for a week or just organise a family reunion for them to see their cousins.
A Bicycle – We will go out on a limb and say that almost every Nigerian kid has been promised a bicycle at some point in their school life. To Nigerian parents, this move is like promising your child a car, because why not, they have made you proud. The downside about this is that a good number of times, the promise is never kept or is postponed until the child is too old for bicycles.
More Books To Read & Summer Classes – As they say, the reward for good work is more work. Trust Nigerian parents to take this statement very seriously, going the extra mile to prepare their child for the next academic session. They will buy books, maybe a few novels or storybooks, but majorly books related to school subjects. The idea is to ensure their ward remains at the top of the class. Some other parents send their kids to summer classes to learn more advanced topics or completely new skills like music, ballet or the rave of the moment – coding.
Gadgets – As a student, good grades are the easiest route to whatever gadget you have been desiring. It works like magic. Need a new phone, be first in class. Want a laptop, get that honour roll award. Is the latest PlayStation on your bucket list? Well, just ‘carry first’ in class, then write a well-structured letter about the advantages of games to brain development. Haha.
The only downside to getting that dream gadget is often the data maintenance that comes with it. Today’s kids watch a lot of videos on YouTube and that can be data-intensive because they never stop at one or two videos. Here’s some good news, MTN Nigeria is offering her customers more data for less, at very superior speed!
In June this year, MTN announced the launch of 4G+, an upgrade from its 4G service which saw the broadband speed provided to users go up to 200 megabytes per second (Mbps). That meant faster download speeds, more crisp HD videos and a lot more seamless browsing. Along with this, the brand has also announced a data slash that will see subscribers get from 25% to 100% increase on their data purchases from as low as N50 (yes, everyone is getting a piece of the pie). Some of the really exciting plans on offer include 50 Naira for 50mb plan, which gives users access to the internet for a day and the 500naira for 2GB plan that lasts for 2 days and is great for heavy data users.
Residents of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt are the first subscribers to get the 4G+ service in their city, and other people will be hoping to join them very soon.
