Stakeholders in the nation’s telecom industry have described the recent sale of 700MHz spectrum by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to MTN Nigeria as illegal and have called for its outright cancellation.
According to the stakeholders who are made up of staff of other major telecom companies and investors in the telecoms industry, the NBC has neither legal nor statutory right to make such sale, a mandate they said belong only to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
They allege that MTN Nigeria used underhand means to get the NBC to approve the sale of the 700MHz spectrum to them under controversial and non-transparent circumstances which did not follow due process and does not comply with the Communication’s Act 2003 as well as the Procurement Act 2007 both of which states that such assets should be sold through a competitive bidding process.
Stakeholders argue that MTN got the spectrum under the guise of a digital television transmission (DTT) licence when the real intention was to use it for their broadband services; clearly a deceptive means to bypass the legitimate process of bidding and access the spectrum before the agreed date to the detriment of other telecoms operators.
Reacting to the on-going controversy, Mr Uche Chukwukere, a Lagos based telecom investor called for the cancellation of the 700MHz spectrum sale to MTN by the NBC. “The licence should be withdrawn. In fact, the officials of NBC who approved the sale should all be arrested because NBC has no right to assign spectrum to a telecommunications company. That is the job of the NCC,” he stated.
As the wheels of Justice turns against N34 billion MTN-NBC illegal deal
Finally, I am delighted that the anti- corruption wind finally blew away Emeka Mba, former DG of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) who was shown the exit as President Buhari’s broom strives to cleanse our system.
This brings me to this question, was the NBC sale of the 700MHz spectrum licence to MTN legal and transparent? The sale of the licence was one of the most clandestine sale of a national asset of such strategic value.
Apparently the sale process was not advertised publicly, neither was it auctioned through bidding and unlike NCC, the NBC is not a telecoms regulator so one wonders how the broadcast regulator could determine what a fair price would be for a spectrum meant for the telecoms industry.
Isn’t it questionable for NBC, which is clearly struggling with its mandate to meet the target set for the Digital Transfer, to then sell the same 700MHz spectrum it was mandated to free up to MTN despite the fact that the rest of the telecoms industry has been standing by and waiting for NBC to switch to digital broadcasting and release the very scarce spectrum to the NCC?
Following the outcry on the illegality of this deal, the EFCC swooped on the DG of NBC, Emeka Mba, for allegedly operating a secret account into which about N17 billion funds belonging to the commission were lodged.
Truth be told, Mr Mba has staggered from one allegation to the other. For example, a petition against him by some contractors and broadcast license losers alleged that the process of awarding contracts and issuance of licenses by the Commission were not transparent and also breached due process. They had written to the EFCC to complain about underhand dealings in award of licenses and contracts.
Need I say more? The whole thing is a fetid, sordid mess. I hope the EFCC get to the bottom of it.
With inputs by Taofik Muiz
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