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Umar Garba Danbatta,the Executive Vice Chairman of Nigeria Communication’s Commission,(NCC),has confirmed that telecom giant MTN, has reached an amicable settlement agreement with the commission in respect to the fine payment of N330 billion.
It would be recalled that MTN had initially incurred a fine payment of N1.04 trillion ,for violation of SIM registration laws as required by the NCC ;meanwhile after series of appeals,the fine was reviewed downward to N330bn with a staggered payment to be completed within three years.
Danbatta,while speaking to newsmen in Abuja on Monday,at a media interaction to commemorate his one year in office said the telecom giant has reached an “amicable settlement agreement with the commission”
While giving an update regarding the payed fine,Danbatta said,
“Because the payment agreement was reached with the NCC,we have written a letter to the honourable Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice;requesting for that money be credited into the NCC account domiciled in the the Central Bank of Nigeria.
We are trying to get it from the recovery account down to be remitted forthwith into the consolidated revenue account of the Federal Government domiciled in the same CBN”Danbatta said.
In addition to the N50 bn they have paid and in consistent with the settlement agreement, they have also paid N30bn”Danbatta said.
For this year,they have fulfilled in consistent with the settlement agreement the amount they are supposed to pay. So,in all,they have paid N80bn remaining N250 bn to be paid in consistent with the payment terms”Danbatta explained.
Meanwhile,Danbatta while speaking on charges on drop calls by some telcos condemned it in totality,adding that subscribers should not be charged anything in respect to to charges they did not enjoy.
The NCC will be there to protect the interest of the subscriber,if there are few cases of breach,we must be alerted so that we formally write to the mobile network operator informing them that we had noticed charges on operation of services not rendered,and this should stop”
If the operator fail to address that after the complaints,the subscriber has the opportunity to complain through the toll free number,and we make sure that the subscriber gets back his money,no matter how long it takes, while ensuring that such operator does not go scort free,as we have task force team in the commission already working on that”Danbatta said.
He stated further that the commission’s effort in ensuring SIM registration is to avert incidences of security breaches.
“We have adopted a no nonsense approach on SIM registration. The NCC had continuously in the company of Law Enforcement Agents are making some arrests,and confiscating pre-registered SIM to forestall incidences of compromising security such as kidnapping”Danbatta said.
The security of Nigerians is at stake when there are pre-registered SIMs being sold all over the place,which does not recognise through identity of the subscriber”
The message should be very clear and it has gone beyond monitoring and the directive has been issued,and it is not the case of ensuring compliance,we really enforce. If it means sanctioning erring operators,we will do in order to ensure compliance”Danbatta explained.
Speaking on the agency’s interventions,he said,”NCC is doing some intervention for JAMB. NCC is providing infrastructure as well as ICT materials for the JAMB office to use for their exams in the Computer Based Text.The intervention is targeted at the six geo-political zone.
So far,we do interventions in Schools in six Geo-political one in the country. We do between six and seven schools per zone. Interventions in Secondary school,we do it.We had done that in 1500 secondary schools across the country”
Furthermore,he said,”This year alone,we have given out 60 000 E pads,to Tertiary institutions to assist students with their research works and online interactions”
Another interventions that we do is on E- learning and data sharing in the six geo-poilitical zones,and we select six Universities from the North and six from the South while providing them with connectivity for their businesses”
Danbatta also reassured that he would work assiduosly in line with his eight point agenda.According to him,”It is a roadmap,designed with the underligning determination to align our regulatory efforts to compliment emergent priorities of the present Federal Government and streamline our focus in the quest to put our nation in the league of structured telecom development that will in turn lead to socio-economic development.
