MTN Group Ltd.’s license renewal in Nigeria could face uncertainty if Africa’s biggest wireless company doesn’t pay a $5.2 billion fine for failing to disconnect customers with unregistered SIM cards, according to the country’s telecommunications regulator.
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MTN shareholders are highly likely to see a huge slump in their dividends at the end of the financial year, as the MTN Group’s shares dropped by over 12 per cent, the worst fall in more than 10 years – wiping off E44 billion of the mobile giant’s market value.
The House specifically resolved to investigate the NCC on the N6.1 billion appropriated for the SIM registration exercise by the National Assembly. “The fine of N1,040 billion is in line with Section 19 of the SIM Registration Regulations specifying N200,000 per unregistered SIM and the penalty has been applied for the 5.2m MTN SIM card registration records found to be non-compliant by the NCC”, a confidential NCC document was quoted by Sahara Reporters as saying.
MTN said in a statement that it was in discussion with NCC to “resolve the matter”.
MTN said the “fine relates to the timing of the disconnection of 5.1 million MTN Nigeria subscribers, who were disconnected in August and September 2015”.
Statistics from the NCC indicates that the West African nation of an estimated 170 million people, has nearly 150 million mobile phone subscribers.
“It’s an extremely punitive fine”, Dobek Pater of Africa Analysis told Quartz Africa.
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“In the NCC quarterly compliance enforcement report for the second quarter of 2015, out of the six sanctions imposed on operators for various acts of non-compliance, MTN was involved and sanctioned for four separate infractions”.
