Senate has condemned the reduction of MTN’s fine from N1.04 trillion to N330 billion.
Accordingly, the Senate directed its Committee on Communications to invite all the relevant stakeholders to shed light on the matter, especially whether the reduction was in accordance with the regulation of the NCC governing fines and penalties.
Those invited include the minister of justice, Abubakar Malami; Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris; minister of communications, Adebayo Shittu; executive vice chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Umar Danbatta; governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele; managing director, MTN Nigeria, Rob Shuter.
Gilbert Nnaji, chairman, Senate Committee on Communications, raised a Point of Order, saying “Section 19 and 20 of the NCC Act has been blatantly breached, since it was not within their powers to reduce the fine without involving appropriate agency of government.”
He said the fine, which was as a result of MTN’s failure to deactivate about 5.2 million unregistered subscribers, was initially reduced from N1.04 trillion to N780 billion.
He expressed regret that these public officers of government have held private meetings with MTN to go out of their way to reduce the amount to N330billion without the input of NCC.
Nnaji said: “Nigeria has been short-changed in this whole process of account of the ridiculous settlement payment plan coupled with the disparity in the exchange rate regime when the fine was imposed compared with the current prevailing exchange rate where the value of naira is taking a downward slide.
“As the representatives of the Nigerian people we are saddened about this development coming at a time when the Nigerian economy needs all the available capital infusion to bolster it”.
The motion was adopted and the appropriate committee asked to handled the issue and report back to the senate in two weeks.
Also at plenary, the Senate approved a total sum of N241,114,000,000 for the 2016 Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) budget.
The upper legislative chamber also urged the Federal Government to move the initial amount of N50 billion from the CBN Recovery Account to the CBN/NCC Treasury Single Account (TSA).
In passing the budget, the Senate reduced the N260,064,000,000 budget of the Commission submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari to N241,114,000,000.
The slash in the budget was in the area of development projects.
The President had proposed N231,224,000,000 but the Upper legislative Chamber cut it down to N212,274,000,000.
The breakdown of the budget showed that Personnel Expenditure N17,560,518,930, Overhead Expenditure N9,980,000,000 and Internal Capital Expenditure N1,300,000,000.
Presenting the report of his Committee on the budget, Chairman, Senate Committee on Niger Delta, Peter Nwaoboshi said the slash represents 8.20 percent.
The Senate adjourned till July 12, 2016.
