The National Communications Commission, NCC, has denied singling out telecommunication service provider, MTN Nigeria, for penalty for non-compliance with the deadline to deactivate all subscribers’ unregistered SIM cards on its network.
The commission’s director of public affairs, Mr. Tony Ojobo, yesterday, in Lagos, said of all the service providers in the country, only MTN failed to comply with the directive and the commission was left with no option than to invoke the relevant provisions of law.
Recall that the commission recently slammed MTN with a fine of N1.4 trillion for failing to disconnect 5.1 million subscribers on its network that failed to register properly.
He said the commission had given ample time to all the service providers to comply with its directive but MTN failed in that regard.
On why the fine appears huge, he explained that it was because the lines not deactivated were much.
“MTN had 5.1 million lines that were not deactivated, and the fine for each line not deactivated is N200,000; so, multiplied this by the number of lines in its network which it failed to deactivate.
“It was not that we arbitrarily came to that figure as the fine. There was a process and we followed that process, and MTN is not disputing this,” he said.
He added: “The question people should be asking is, why is it only MTN? But people are not asking that; instead they are saying the fine is huge.
We didn’t just arrive at the fine overnight.” He said the accusation of singling out MTN as a foreign company to be dealt with is incorrect as it is not the only foreign telecom service provider operating in Nigeria. “Airtel is foreign, and it has complied; Etisalat complied as well as Glo.
So, why not MTN? The propaganda is assuming international dimension such that people are thinking the commission was out to frustrate foreign investments. Is there any country you operate today that you do not comply with its existing laws?” he queried.
He explained that the guidelines were clearly stated and that all the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria today are party to it. Said he: “Before now, all the parties knew that the fine for each unregistered line that is not deactivated was N200,000.
In August, we had a meeting, which all the parties attended, including the Department of State Security Services and these things were discussed, including the security implications.
After that we had another meeting with the director of DSS and he was practically begging the operators to deactivate the unregistered lines.
“The security report was that the lines used by kidnappers were MTN lines and these lines were not registered and that the operators should deactivate them. Then, they were saying they didn’t want to do it at once but they would do it in phases.
“When our enforcement team went on inspection, they discovered they had not even deactivated one line.”
