Mixed Reactions Trail Netflix Entrance to Nigeria

There are divided opinion among Nigerians on the Netflix entrance to Nigeria. Netflix Inc’s video-streaming service went live in more than 130 countries including Nigeria on Wednesday, covering almost the entire globe except China, in a huge global push by Reed Hastings, the chief executive officer to counter slowing growth in the United States.

Shares of the company, whose popular shows include “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”, “Daredevil” and “Narcos”, jumped 9.3 percent to close at $117.68.
India, Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia were among the major countries where the service was launched, Hastings said at a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Netflix, which had expanded into more than 60 countries before Wednesday’s launch, previously said it aimed to reach 200 countries by the end of 2016.‎

However, Nigerians who took to social media to share both their excitement and frustration listed data, piracy and power as the possible challenges to Netflix thriving in the most populous black nation.

As of October 2015, Netflix reported 69.17 million subscribers worldwide, including more than 43 million in the United States.‎

Similarly, Nigeria’s movie industry known as Nollywood has struggled to deal with the activities of pirates in the country especially with those at Alaba in Ojo area of Lagos state.

Similarly, Nigeria’s data speed has proved to be a problem over the years despite the leading telcos upping their services.

These two problems including that of electricity might prove to be a bottleneck for Netflix but Nigeria’s population will no doubt be an advantage to the movie streaming company.

Here are some tweets for Netflix Inc.

@GodsOwnPpty Netflix  in Nigeria but we don\'t have high speed internet. We already have Alaba boys giving us movies for N100
‎
@asemota: cards are costly in Nigeria, if not...How to get free Netflix for life
‎
@Ebuka_akara: why is Netflix in Nigeria? They better return to were they re coming from. We know were we download free stuff from. They won\'t last here.

@Xavexy_laxx Netflix in Nigeria, pls com alng wt faster internet & cheap data or else D next tag to trend in few months wil be Netflix leaving Nigeria‎.