The Federal Government’s hope of raking in N330 billion from MTN as fine may have been dashed as the GSM giant has said it can not pay more than N80 billion till 2020.
It could be recalled that the said penalty was for the company’s failure to register more than eight million lines of its subscribers in 2014.
The original fine was N500 billion, but the South African firm used it has reached out to convince government top functionaries to cut it down to the current charge.
However, it was gathered that a delegation of the company, who met with the Minister of Communications, Mr Adebayo Shittu, told him bad that business in 2016 had made it impossible to meet further payment.
In addition, the delegate raised the issue of other competitors, including Airtel, Etisalat and others whose default on similar act were not treated the same way with that of MTN’s.
“MTN does not have a choice, when the law was made, it said for every unregistered SIM card in use, the fine is N200, 000, the law never anticipated that one company will be in violation to the tune of millions of lines.
“It was inconceivable, so when the thing was added 200,000 times 5.2 million lines, it came to a trillion plus,” the Minister had told newsmen.
He said that even in the court system, if one was fined and could not pay for one reason or the other, the person would ask for reconsideration either by way of appeal or bringing a motion, adding that so far MTN is playing to the gallery.
