Oni Asks Court To Revoke MTN Licence

The ex-Governor Segun Oni of Ekiti state has asked a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja to revoke the licence of the Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN), Nigeria for manipulating the call logs between the suspended President of the Court of Appeal (PCA), Justice Isa Salami and some chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

He accused the firm of not releasing the full Call Data Records (CDRs) of Justice Salami to assist the National Judicial Council (NJC) in the investigation of its petition against some justices.

Oni named MTN and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as co-defendants in the suit.

The Federal High Court in Abuja had struck out a similar suit by former Osun State Governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) against the firm.

Justice Salami presided over the two different panels that sacked both Oyinlola and Oni as Governors.

In the suit coming before Justice Adamu Bello on February 25, the Plaintiffs claimed that while the three other GSM service providers cooperated fully with the NJC panel and provided the call data records spanning in some cases six calendar months, the MTN provided inadequate and incomplete call data records to the law enforcement and securities agencies.

The plaintiff maintained ’’that to his utmost dismay, the First Defendant forwarded only the originating (outgoing) component without the terminating (incoming) component to law enforcement and securities agencies particularly the National Security Adviser (NSA) who transmitted same to NJC.

“And that the call data records forwarded deliberately covered only a period starting from December 2010 in order to invalidate those the First Defendant released to the Area Commander ‘Area G’ command which covered the period between 01/09/2010 and 30/01/2011 a period of 5months.

By so doing, the Plaintiff stated that the MTN has corporately descended into the arena of politics; acted unfairly in breach of ethics, deviating from the principal objectives or goal for which it was registered and granted a licence by the Second Defendant.

Oni asked the court to declare that the First Defendant is duty bound as a telecommunications operator licensed pursuant to Nigeria Communications Act CAP 97, 2003, Laws of the federation of Nigeria, 2004, to assist security agencies, judicial or quasi-judicial bodies in the discharge of their duties in the national interest and to make transparent disclosure as when required to security, judicial and quasi-judicial bodies that may request for such through thr appropriate agencies or bodies.

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