President Muhammadu Buhari
• ‘10,000 Nigerians killed’
• S’Africa will return confiscated money, says Zuma
• Reciprocate our hospitality, Dogara tells him
President Muhammadu Buhari has alleged that the failure of MTN Nigeria to disconnect millions of unregistered Subscribers Identification Modules (SIM) cards may have fuelled Boko Haram insurgency in the North East and led to the death of thousands of Nigerians.
Buhari who spoke during a joint media briefing with the South African President , Jacob Zuma who is on a two-day visit to Nigeria , also indicated that MTN could continue talks with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), though silent on the Federal Government’s next move.
On his part, Zuma promised that his government would return to Nigeria the money which was seized from officials of the Goodluck Jonathan administration who had taken it to South Africa to procure arms and ammunition.
In another development, Speaker, House of Representatives Yakubu Gogara told Zuma that his country should reciprocate the hospitality and immense goodwill it enjoys in Nigeria. He spoke during a vote of thanks following Zuma’s address to the joint session of the National Assembly yesterday.
In his first public comments since the crisis over the $ 5.2 billion fine blew open, last year, Buhari noted that the concern of government was not of the fine per se but more for the security implication of the negligence by the telecoms giant, which led to the imposition of the fine last year by the NCC.
“The concern of government was basically on security and not the fine imposed on MTN. You know how the unregistered SIMs were being used by terrorists between 2009 and today.At least, 10,000 Nigerians were killed by Boko Haram. That was why NCC asked MTN, Glo and the rest of them to register GSM subscribers .
Unfortunately, MTN was very, very slow and contributed to …Read More
Source:: Guardian Newspaper
