President Muhammadu Buhari has said the fine imposed on MTN by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) was not about the money involved but about national security. While expressing his support for NCC for taking the action, the President said MTN did not behave well as its action tended to undermine national security.

He said this Tuesday on the heels of President Jacob Zuma’s visit to Nigeria. The fine imposed on MTN was part of the closed door talk between both leaders. A Presidency source said the President was forthright when he explained the undercurrents of the fine to the visiting President Zuma. The source however said a further downward review of the fine is possible going by the mood of President Buhari. Nigeria’s President was miffed by the action of MTN especially its consistent penchant to disregard rules and regulations governing the industry as spelt out by the regulator.

Meantime, from Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications has come a stern warning to telecom operators to stop their dubious charges and cheating of consumers or be prepared to face the full wrath of the law.

Shittu said he has continued to receive distress calls and complaints from telecom consumers on how the telcos have been billing them arbitrarily and making deductions on services they did not subscribe.

“This action must stop immediately or else severe sanctions will be imposed on any operator that violates this directive,” an angry Shittu said. Some of the complaints are extortion through unauthorised charges for unsubscribed services such as “FUN, Music Box and Sports Den messages charged by Etisalat, Hausa Amazing Fact Service charged by Glo, N50 charged for MTN Backup every two weeks, N50 for MTN CallerFeel per month, CallerTunez, Easynews and Holla Back Tones by Airtel etc.”

To stop the illegal charges, the minister directed the NCC to properly monitor telecom operators and prevent them from imposing dubious charges for services not rendered and provide regular updates on monthly basis. “Any Operator found wanting   henceforth will be sanctioned,” he said.

The minister said that all the service providers of using incessant dropped calls; poor service; dead or silent calls and cross calls; data bundle rollover and deficiency in data penetration as some of the methods through which Nigerian GSM operators are being cheated.

Other areas are rollout of 4G/LTE network, the minister said: “With the acquisition of 800MHZ Frequency by some of the operators and the recently advertised auctioning of 2.6GHZ Spectrum by NCC, the Network Operators will be encouraged to rollout 4G/LTE Network by the second quarter of 2016 so as to increase Broadband penetration as enshrined in the National Broadband Policy (2013 – 2018) of the federal government.”

Shittu similarly accused the telecom operators of short-changing the federal government in underpaid taxes and levies because they would not declare their gross revenue and declared: “The federal government will take advantage of new technologies to verify the amount of revenue generated by the telecom operators via government regulatory and revenue agencies like the NCC, FIRS etc.”

As if that is not serious enough, the minister said he had been to be aware that professional jobs meant for Nigerians were being taken over by foreigners and even menial jobs that were expected to be carried out by Nigerian artisans were given to foreigners. “This is clearly against the intention of the expatriates’ quota policy. It has also come to my notice that some companies have laid-off a high number of its Nigerian Employees in the last two years and outsourced most of its operations to Foreigners who are evading tax because of non-documentation by Nigeria Immigration Service. Some of these foreigners came into Nigeria on visitors’ visa but they ended up working without work permit. This practice is prevalent across all the mobile operators. The Federal Government is already investigating this and any operator found wanting will be severely sanctioned,” Shittu said.

The minister also said there were discrepancy and discrimination against Nigerians employees by telecom operators and asked them to stop the unfair treatment or be made to face the wrath. “The Federal Government will look into the agreement reached with the operators during the issuance of licenses and decide whether there is any aspect of non-compliance.

“Finally, government hopes that all telecom Operators will strictly comply with extant laws and rules guiding telecom operations in Nigeria in order to ensure mutual cooperation and respect between the government and operators. We should be seen as partners in progress and no operator should circumvent any policies of the Federal Government as doing so will lead to severe sanctions,” Shittu said.