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For MTN, one of the nation’s leading telecommunications network providers, trouble no longer rains, it pours. In Uganda, a court ordered the telecom company to pay the sum of Shs 2.3 billion (about $662,000) in damages to EzeeMoney Ltd for sabotaging the latter’s business in November. Also, last month, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) found MTN guilty of violating the Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) registration regulations by failing to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered subscribers. From an initial $5.2 billion fine, MTN pleaded for clemency with a payment deadline of today (December 31) and NCC was magnanimous to slash the fine by 25 per cent. Rather than pay the $3.9bn, MTN rushed to court, in a volte face, to challenge the regulatory agency’s power to impose such a fine. NCC has equally picked up the gauntlet and has asked the Federal High Court, Lagos, to decline jurisdiction and transfer the case to Abuja, where the cause of the action arose.
For us, the SIM registration palaver is child’s play compared to the latest allegation that Radio Biafra transmitters were installed on MTN masts in Enugu and Anambra states to boost its reach. If the group chief executive officer of the telecom company, Sifiso Dabengwa, was fired as a consequence of SIM registration, which was a business infraction, we wonder who will go in for the present indiscretion on the part of MTN, which is purely a security breach bordering on treasonable felony.
If it is correct that Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), mounted Radio Biafra transmitters on MTN masts to ensure wider coverage for the radio, and that MTN hirelings, Chidiebere Onwudiwe and Benjamin Madubugwu, who worked as engineers with Ericsson Nigeria Ltd and Huawei, a Chinese networking and manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, facilitated the process, then we think there is need to review the outsourcing procedure for the maintenance of MTN’s 12,000 base stations across the country. For us, the present arrangement makes MTN vicariously liable for the actions of these accused persons.
We are appalled by the choice of MTN to undermine the territorial integrity of the country and we expect the security agencies and the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to dig deeper to establish if the consent of MTN was sought and got by Kanu and his accomplices in perpetrating this ridiculous project. Since it has been established that the transmitters were smuggled into the country from the United Kingdom by Kanu and installed between April and May, 2015, more needs to be done to establish the complicity of foreigners and their Nigerian accomplices in this evil agenda. All agencies that vet importation, like the Customs and Excise, should also be probed.
Fair enough, we are looking for direct foreign investments but not from those who will become patrons of Nigeria’s disintegration. Much as we commend the NCC, NBC and the security agencies for their prompt arraignment of enemies of the state, there is need to pull the dragnet further to encompass institutions, companies – local or foreign – that tacitly or overtly encourage division in the land.
