Photograph — Wikipedia

Presently in talks with Nigerian regulators, Africa’s largest telecoms provider, MTN Group is working tirelessly to review Nigeria’s $5.2 billion (N1.04 trillion) fine to $1.04 million (N208 million ) as the company cooperates with the Nigerian banking sector for loans to balance out the huge fine.

This development was revealed by the head of research, Renaissance Capital (RenCap) Nigeria, Adesoji Solanke, in his note to clients on Wednesday. “MTN is pushing to reduce the fine by 60 to 80 percent,” Bloomberg quoted Solanke to have said.

As Nigeria is MTN’s largest and profitable market, the fine is a massive blow to the company, as it has led to a 16% drop of the company’s share on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The company’s shares reportedly lost almost a quarter of its value after this fine was disclosed, before managing to recover nine percent in the past two sessions. Also, South African vice president, Cyril Ramaphosa, says MTN must respect any laws given by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The Nigerian government’s decision to impose such an excessive fine on a multinational company is not out of place, considering the imposition of a $10million and $3.9 bn fine in 2010 and 2014 respectively on Shell for the oil spillage and environmental damage it has caused in the Bodo Community.

According the the commission, the telecommunications company failed to comply despite being given a 12-month warning on the importance of ensuring that only SIM cards with valid SIM registration details should be active on telecommunications networks. They also said that the fine issued to the company was imperative.

MTN Nigeria currently controls 43 percent of the country’s telecommunications market and the failure to fully deactivate unregistered subscribers would impede the government’s ability to trace criminal activity especially in the fight against terrorism. Nigeria’s state security has alleged that unregistered SIM cards were being used for criminal activity.

MTN has 11 days to meet its November 16 deadline for paying up the fine it has been slammed with, making it one of the biggest fine cases in Nigeria’s history of telecommunications.

Editors note

The previous currency conversion reported in the above article has been updated:

$1.04 million= N208 million, and not N208 billion

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