Data is life

There was a time when one of my friends asked me for money and I was heavily broke that period. Instead of giving her the usual line of "I will see what I can do", I boldly opened up and told her that I was broke and I'm not giving anybody anything.

I even went ahead to tell her that my data subscription has finished and there is no way for me to subscribe for data because my bank account is only 105 naira.

A few hours later, she messaged me on Whatsapp [Hi] and it ticked twice (delivered), and the next message I saw was:

Was it not you who said you don't have data and no means to subscribe because you're broke? Ehnn... You didn't want to give me the 1,000 naira I begged for

I took a deep sigh and gave her the real explanation, which goes like this:

I'm among those people who can't stay an hour without data on their phone, and I can sacrifice my stomach to get my phone subscribed

Over the years, my major means of communication has been on text, which is very far away from calls. I think every man passes this stage in his life where he prefers to stick to texting than to make calls...I'm currently at that age. The only time I buy airtime to make call is maybe when I need to get directly to my parents, i.e., if I don't need to pass through my siblings. All other conversations have been on chat, and everyone knows my WhatsApp account for that because I reply to messages.

This is why my internet connection is always active, and the data powering it is likened to life, as one of the telecommunication companies in Nigeria calls it; Data is life

No matter how broke I am, even when my account balance is showing 'bitter leaf green', money for the data subscription must come out. Sometimes I wonder how this money springs out of nowhere when hope is lost; the mystery behind it is something I'm yet to phantom

I remember a particular day that N300 was left in my account, and I was faced with the option of using the N300 to buy Noodles and eat because there was no food at home and I was hungry, or I should use the N300 to buy 1.5 GB of data because my subscription has exhausted.
I weighed the two options based on preference, and I decided to go for data first; after all, I haven't heard that someone died of hunger.

That evening, while surfing the internet on an empty stomach, a credit alert of 3K just dropped on my Opay account. I checked, and it was one of the people owning me.

Look at it this way:
Opay Account doesn't work with SMS; it only works with notifications from the app, which is powered by data. If I weren't online that day, I wouldn't have known and saved my stomach. You see why data is life?