LESSONS TO LEARN FROM ORANGE CAMEROON’S PR CRISIS Over the weekend I got to know about a crisis that has been rocking Orange Cameroon for a few weeks now. Being an MTN customer, I was a little in the dark about what happened and so I had to hit up a cousin of mine after seeing the hashtag #OrangeIsTheNewmafia trending a little bit on Twitter.
My cousin is an Orange customer, and his explanation, coupled with a few tweets I read made me understand that the hashtag was chosen in a poll by Orange customers on Twitter after one particularly irate Orange customer took upon himself to rally other irate customers and lead the fight against Orange with regards to a very controversial service that no one opted in for.
The service in question was something called “reserve credit.” Basically, when Orange customers recharged their phone, an arbitrary amount was cut off and sent to the reserve credit; a reserve credit purse whose reason for existence is as opaque as the attribution policy.
At the end of the day however, #OrangeIsTheNewMafia became not only a protest signature against the reserve credit but a complaint platform for every dissatisfaction customers had with the provider.
The instigator of the protest, a certain Florian Ngimbis (actually a very popular blogger), created an online petition form and told Orange customer services rather stoically that if the ‘reserve credit’ service was not rolled back, he would take the petition to the Telecom Regulations Agency and file and an official complain.
The mobilisation was beautiful, and everyday, hundreds of people tweeted and retweeted their woes with the network with the hashtag. Three international news organisation, including RFI, picked up the story and just a little over a week after the online protest started, Orange Cameroon bowed to the pressure and too the proverbial L.
The ‘reserve credit’ service was cancelled and from what I gather from my cousin, Orange Customers are now galvanising for another campaign; stopping the network from eating into their credit when their data bundle is used up.
Good for them.
But to go back to the main issue of today which is inscribed in the title of this article, I thought hard about the lessons that this teaches us ad which, I think, is important for us; and which after everything, should be our takeaway. And I can summarise that in one word.
MOBILISATION.
Perhaps, it goes beyond the scope of mobilisation alone. There are also elements of togetherness, a defined goal and a clear vision. In this #OrangeIsTheNewMAfia fight, the togetherness was seen in the fact that all Orange customers, irrespective of who they are, could use the hashtag as the platform, the goal was to have the reserve credit service stopped, and the vision is without doubt to be able to be users of a service where the customers’ need and wants are put first and over company policies.
I continue to think that one of the reasons why the Anglophone problem has failed is because the people who had the biggest platform turned it into a franco/anglo problem rather than an ‘Us’ problem. I’m not saying here that there isn’t an Anglophone problem. Heaven knows there is one; but the truth remains that despite it being in a basket of its own peculiarities, the Anglophone problem is first of all an institutional and political problem. One that everyone suffers from.
And while the Anglophones are a minority, it is very difficult for the minority to fight a majority. I may be stretching here but I want to believe that one of the reasons why the civil rights movements was able to gain the strides it was able to gain it did, is because first of all, Dr King didn’t turn the movement into a white vs black issue and also a lot of white people were encouraged to ride the Freedom Riders buses. Bref…
A spirit of mobilisation, a true one with leaders who had defined their immediate goals and looked into the vision of a future for the Anglophones, would have seen that at the time when the crisis began (2016), elections were exactly two years away and that was the perfect opportunity to leverage the Anglophone problem as a first step to solving all the institutional issues that everyone else in this country is suffering from.
In 2016, I remember telling one of my friends in a group chat that ghost towns at the end of the day could not be used as long term tool as the people instituting it were going to be the ones suffering in the long run. He told me to ‘buzz off’ and said that nobody needed my input because, after all, I was a frog and could not understand his struggles. Two weeks ago he was complaining about Ghost towns.
I hate to say I was right after all. I am not happy about being right because dozens of people are being killed every day and families are torn apart. But I want to think that if the Anglophone problem was used to leverage the participation of everyone against the instigators of the institutional problems we have had for 30+ years, it would have been a different kettle of fish today.
I know it sounds utopic and some of you might say “oh but how are we sure that they would join us in the fight?” Well… that’s where leadership matters. From the get-go those with the greatest platform on social media, rather than explaining the problem to their francophone counterparts instead insulted them. I also said in 2016 that Ivo and Mark should have been translating their posts into French so that the people on the other side of the Moungo understand. This opportunity was hijacked unfortunately by Mr ‘How can you say this and Vision 4. We all know the outcome. And it has gotten worse. Sure, many people might not join. I saw people on Twitter asking Orange subscribers who were complaining why they did not just switch to another network. Some people will never see the merits in pursuing a noble battle, but that does not mean we cannot fight for them. #OrangeIsTheNewMafia has taught us the merits of mobilisation. The presidential elections is 3 weeks. Many of you reading this did not even bother to register. And don’t tell me it’s because of the crisis. Even without the crisis a lot of you would not have registered. Facts.
We have to learn to come together, to work towards a common goal and share a common mission. A few apples might fall off the barrel along the way, but once we have a clear vision then, fighting becomes a helluva lot easier.
I don’t know what tomorrow will look like. I’m not sure where we are headed. But we all know what we want. And we should be able to put aside certain things in order to achieve them
Wandji Wilfred.