Telecoms giant, MTN, after a ding-dong affair with the Nigerian Communications Commission, has finally paid N50 billion out of the N780 billion it was fined for not de-registering some of their customers as at when due.
Not only that, they are now exploring other avenues of resolving the matter out of court. MTN and NCC had been given up till March 8, 2016 to thrash out their differences by the court. However, weeks before that, they have decided to pay a part of the money.
MTN, it would be recalled, had months back incurred the wrath of NCC for allowing a whopping 5.1 million unregistered customers to operate on the network – contrary to NCC’s directive. They were initially fined N1.04 trillion, which was later reduced to N780 billion, out of which they just paid N50 billion.
The noise generated by the fine then had led to the resignation of some of the company’s top guns, among them, their Nigeria MD, the Group MD, etc.