President Will Decide On MTN’s $5.2bn Fine – Minister

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu, has said that the issue of N1.4 trillion (about $5.2bn) fine imposed on MTN Nigeria by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), is now before President Muhammadu Buhari, who will take the necessary decision at the appropriate time in the best interest of the country.

He stated that it was easy for him during his tenure as a military head of state to arrest and put those alleged corrupt individuals in protective custody for them to prove their innocence but the dictates of the rule of law and due process had slowed him down in prosecuting corrupt people in this dispensation.

“We want to have everything back – all that they took by force in 16 years”, the President was quoted to have told the Nigerian community in Tehran, Iran on Wednesday, November 25.

“The [Communications] minister [Adebayo Shittu] said in Lagos that it will be up to the president to determine which direction to go since MTN asked for leniency”, ministry spokesman Tajudeen Kareem said.

According to the statement, Buhari also addressed the long-standing poor power supply in the country, saying the sabotage and theft of gas are undermining his administration’s effort to improving electricity supply in Nigeria.

President Buhari also pledged to deal conclusively with saboteurs who are destroying pipelines and stealing crude oil.

“I’m sure you know about the privatisation of the power sector; your old friends, NEPA or Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) have been sold to private concerns”. We have the potential.

“Those who normally steal Nigerian crude and those who blow up installations, whether they called themselves militants or whatever, they are still there”, he said.

Buhari said: “Although some improvement in power had been recorded in the recent period, sabotage of pipeline installations continues to be a problem”.

The President also assured the Nigerians that his administration would revamp the nation’s educational system from primary school to the tertiary levels.

The president had since returned to Nigeria yesterday. There are many countries where subscribers, in the entire country, are not up to half of the five million.

In his remarks, the Nigerian Charge de Affairs in Iran, Dr Ali Magashi, attested to the zero crime rate among Nigerians living in Iran.

He explained that few Nigerians now in prison in Iran were drug couriers, who attempted to smuggle banned substances into the country from Afghanistan.