Mobile and Internet Giant MTN (@MTNNG) Has SITES SHUT DOWN by #Enugu state govt over ALLEGED DEBT! U may lose VOICE and Data!

MTN says that even your service may be affected. The Enugu state government are being gangsta and not thinking of the people? Voice and data may be affected. Glad I dont run my biz from Enugu but what about the people who do??

This is to inform the general public, especially our customers in Enugu State that some of our sites (including hub sites which control several others beyond Enugu) have been sealed off by officials of the State Ministry of Lands and Urban Development.

As reported by some newspapers, the action of the Enugu state government is predicated on a claim that telecom operators are indebted to the tune of over N700 million as accumulated approval fees and penalties for building illegal cell sites.

Specifically, the State Ministry also threatened to shut down two MTN sites every day until we accede to its demand for N464, 400,000 as payment of penalties for allegedly building 129 sites without appropriate permits.



OUR POSITION

We wish to bring to the attention of the public that the state government’s action is guided by a law which was only enacted in 2012. However, the 129 base stations in question were constructed before the enactment of the extant law. Such retroactive legislation is universally deemed to be unfair and draconian.

Despite our concerns over the application of a retroactive law, in February 2014 MTN paid the sum of N85, 785,000 being statutory payment for the 129 base stations in question so that there is no disruption to service in the state.

However, the State Government are still demanding a further N464 million as penalties owed by MTN under the aforementioned vexatious law. Our position is that this is excessive and illegal.

As a responsible law-abiding organization, our lawyers have held several meetings with officials of the state government to resolve the issue amicably, while we seek the intervention of the courts to order the reopening of our sealed sites.


IMPLICATIONS ON OUR NETWORK

We hereby inform our esteemed customers of the likely consequences to quality of service due to the actions by Enugu State Government namely :


Voice and data services will be affected in Enugu State and its environs
Loss of service to several Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) across Enugu and neighbouring states. This will lead to poor network quality and possible loss of network coverage for MTN subscribers in the affected areas.
Loss of enterprise data service to third-party clients (mostly banks and other big corporate clients) which may impact on services such as ATMs and POS etc.

While we work to resolve the issue, we regret to inform our customers that the affected cell sites may remain closed pending the resolution of the matter.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Regards,

Management