Nigeria said it was expecting telecoms giant MTN to meet a deadline for paying a record $3.9 billion fine which expires Thursday, despite the South African operator challenging the penalty in court. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the countryโs telecoms regulator, had in October fined the firm for missing a deadline to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards, citing security concerns in a country plagued by frequent kidnappings and an extremist Islamist insurgency Boko Haram.
It imposed a whopping $5.2 billion fine, later reduced to $3.9 billion (3.6 billion euros) following an appeal by MTN. โIf MTN fails to meet the deadline today (Thursday), the regulatory body will enforce the fine,โ Nigerian communications ministry spokesman Victor Oluwadamilare told AFP.
Oluwadamilare said the pending legal proceedings had nothing to do with the payment deadline, saying โthe court case is not tantamount to extending the deadline.โ
Johannesburg-based MTN declined to offer a detailed response on Thursday, but said earlier this month it would launch a legal challenge in the Federal High Court in Lagos against the fine, and expected all parties โto restrain from taking further actionโ until the case was concluded.
MTN disconnected the millions of unregistered subscribers in Nigeria at the end of August, it reported in its quarterly performance update in October, adding that 3.4 million of those subscribers had since been reconnected. Nigeriaโs four major phone companies have routinely been fined in the past for regulatory infractions but none has received as big a punishment as MTN.
The initial fine of $5.2 billion was more than MTNโs total sales in Nigeria in 2014 and the equivalent of about 37 percent of the groupโs total revenue, according to Bloomberg News. โThe fine is really unusual, itโs far and away bigger than anything weโve seen globally and anything weโve seen in Nigeria,โ Amy Cameron, telecoms analyst at BMI Research, a market research firm, told AFP.
โNormally when it goes to arbitration like this, it would make sense that the NCC canโt impose the fine until thereโs a decision from the court,โ Cameron said, speaking from London. โI would expect that itโs highly unlikely that MTN would pay anything.โ
Nigeria, Africaโs most populous country of 170 million people, is MTN groupโs largest market with 62.8 million subscribers. It operates in 22 countries in Africa and the Middle East. โMTN is committed to Nigeria and itโs going to stay there. Nigeria is its most profitable market and it has no intention of leaving,โ said Cameron.
