NASS goes against President Buhari on N1.04 MTN fine
– The National Assembly is set to go against President Buhari on the N1.04 trillion fine against MTN for selling unregistered sim cards
– The House of Representative insists that MTN must pay in totality, the N1.04 trillion imposed on it by the NCC
The National Assembly is set to go against President Buhari on the N1.04 trillion fine against MTN
The National Assembly is set to go against President Muhammadu Buhari on the N1.04 trillion fine against the mobile network provider MTN for selling unregistered Subscriber Identification Modules (SIM cards).
President Muhamadu Buhari on Tuesday, March 8, directed that the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) should give room for the fine on MTN to be renegotiated.
However, the House of Representative on Wednesday, March 9, insisted that MTN must pay in totality, the N1.04 trillion imposed on it by the NCC in October 2015.
The chairman, committee on communications, Saheed Akinade-Fijabi (APC-Oyo) said that the fine if paid will redefine the relationship between the telecommunications operators and the regulator.
He said that the N50 billion paid by MTN as a down payment for negotiations out of court was not adequate to make up for allegedly undermining government’s efforts to tackle security challenges in the country.
“The law is there to serve as deterrent for you not to go against them.”
MTN has been trying to circumvent the process and find a way of running away from the law instead of them facing the music.”
A member of the committee, Johnson Agbonayinman (PDP-Edo) said that MTN violated sections 19 and 20 of the Telephone Subscribers Regulations under the Communications Act 2010.
Section 19 of the Act reads: “Any licensee who fails to capture register, deregister or transmit the details of every individual or corporate subscriber to the central data base as specified in the regulation or as may be stipulated from time to time by the Commission is liable to a penalty of N200 000 for each subscription medium.
“Therefore MTN’s failure to deactivate 5.2million SIM cards should be liable to a fine of N2.8 trillion,’’ Agbonayinman said.
However, the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta said that the commission was committed to ensuring compliance by telecommunication operators to register all SIM cards in the country.
“SIM card registration is a continuous process. There is ongoing registration exercise by all operators and NCC will do enforcement checking to ensure compliance,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, he said that NCC was not in receipt of the N50 billion so far paid by MTN.
“I do not know the account where the money was paid into. The commission only received a letter from the Attorney-General of the Federation indicating that MTN had paid the amount into the federal government account,’’ Danbatta said.
In a related development, the Senate summoned the minister of communication technology, Adebayo Shittu and the attorney general and minister of justice, Abubakar Malami, to explain their roles on the reported payment of N50 billion out of the N780bn fine on MTN Nigeria.
The chairman of the Senate committee on communications, Gilbert Nnaji announced the invitation of the minister as well as the executive vice-chairman of NCC, Umar Garba Danbatta, the accountant-general of the federation, Ahmed Idris and the chief executive officer of MTN Nigeria, Phuthuma Nhleko.
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