Nigeria’s First Blackberry Constitution App Hits 10,000 Downloads in 72 hours

The news first broke on Twitter @TechLoy that a cool blackberry app for the Nigerian constitution has been released and available for free download.

Developed by a Nigerian web (now mobile apps) developer @zubairabubakar, the Nigerian constitution on Blackberry is the first of its kind in Nigeria.

When Abubakar gave me the hint last year that he was working on a blackberry app for the Nigerian constitution, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the app.

Within 100 minutes of the release of the app, it was downloaded 300 times and in 3 hours had seen 500 downloads. In 4 hours, it had done 1000 downloads.

After 18 hours, the app had seen 5000 downloads. Truly, “value brings numbers”, as @gbengasesan said.

On 16th January at 10:30am (GMT+1) – just a few minutes ago – the app hit 10,000 downloads in less than 72 hours it was released.

If sold at 100 naira per download, the app would have grossed N1,000,000 in revenues within 3 days.

That gives a glimpse of how much local mobile apps developers can make off their own apps.

The app has even gotten the attention of Nigerian artist and music producer, eLDee who retweeted the news and posted a Twitter update to @zubairabubakar, saying:

“thanks for creating the app! We need more like you in our system”.

Are we going to see more celebrity endorsements? Will celebs start using mobile apps to stream and sell their music?

The app has also been entered into the AppCircus competition of the Mobile Web West Africa event to be held next month in Lagos.

According to Abubakar, the blackberry app is the first of its kind in Africa and will be a useful tool for Nigerian citizens the world over to access the constitution from their mobile phones.

Apparently, the constitution is one of the most important documents that every citizen of a country should possess and there’s no better way than via a mobile phone.

Abubakar explained that the second version of the blackberry app would be released soon with more features and functionality.

My guess is that the next version will be sold, though I’m not sure what the payment method would be.

The app currently doesn’t have a search functionality and doesn’t include the recent two amendments of the constitution signed by President Jonathan.

These would likely be included in the paid version.

If you haven’t yet downloaded the blackberry app, you can still get it for free here.