By Eric Elezuo
A study conducted by a former aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Mr. Reno Omokri, has described how telecommunications giant, MTN, is stifling other companies in the industry, preventing them from engaging in healthy rivalry through high interconnectivity rates. The former Presidential spokesperson use a case study of Ghana and Nigeria to buttress his point.
In a documentary titled ‘How MTN’s Monopoly Destroyed The Ghanaian Economy. And Nigeria Is Next!’, which he produced after a painstaking investigation spanning several months and covering three African countries including Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya, Omokri expised the “practices of telecommunications giant, MTN and their effect on the economies of multiple sub-Saharan countries.”
The politician, who was in the camp of Atiku Abubakar during the last presidential election, declared that “the exposé traced the economic malaise now afflicting the Ghanaian economy partly to the monopolistic policies of MTN, which had led to an unprecedented capital flight from that beleaguered West African nation.”
He noted further: “Last year, Ghana was forced to label MTN a monopoly and slammed heavy fines of $773 million on them for damaging the Ghanaian business environment. MTN went to court, but in October, it was defeated at the Appeals Court, which ruled that the Ghanaian government was right in its classification of MTN.”
Omokri’s report is a consequence of researches to Ghana, where he interviewed government officials, chambers of commerce operatives, and labour union activists, as well as market women and ordinary Ghanaians; Kenya, where he was told that the shenanigans that happen with MTN in Ghana and Nigeria cannothappen there because the government live up to expectation, and are alive to their duties to the people; and Nigeria.
Some of the takeaways from his interviews in Ghana are that “ordinary Ghanaians were observed lamenting the erosion of their personal economy, with a market woman saying, ‘All of us in this country now work for MTN’.”
Also, “Labour leaders complained about MTN’s use of interconnectivity rates to stifle other telcos” and that “whereas all the large and medium-sized African nations where MTN is operating have struggling economies, the fastest growing large economies in Africa, such as Ethiopia and Tanzania, both with an average 6% GDP growth rates, do not have MTN operating in their countries.”
He reasoned that available data has proved that the situation could not be coincidental.
“The documentary also quoted Kevin Ekow Taylor, a prominent journalist in Ghana, as saying that: “MTN is basically monopolising the system. They have taken advantage of the market too much. It is all because government upon government have given MTN too much room.
“Every day, an estimated $2 million leaves the Ghanaian economy to South Africa, MTN’s home country. That is disastrous for a country with a GDP of less than $80 billion.”
Juxyaposing Taylor’s assessment, Omokri also quoted also a well-known Kenyan activist, Bishop Wycliffe Khaemba, who said: “The type of things that are happening in Nigeria and Ghana in the telecoms sector can’t happen in Kenya, because our government is alive to its responsibilities.”
He was referring to Kenya’s Information and Communications Act (Interconnection). This legislation is light years ahead of similar legislation in other African nations.
The Kenyan legislation specifically targets preventing a monopoly in the telecommunications industry by requiring “dominant providers to adhere to the principle of non-discrimination. A dominant interconnection provider is obligated to determine the interconnection charges based on objective criteria and to observe the principles of transparency and cost orientation. Failure to comply will result in the CA requesting the interconnection provider to adjust the charges or risk the imposition of a default interconnection charge by the CA.”
The documentary, now making the rounds on social media, also featured a prominent U.S. Mayor, Mike Arnold, the elected mayor of Blanco, Texas, who advised Nigeria and Ghana to look inwards, rather than outward to foreign goods and services, especially in the telecommunications sector.
It would be recalled not long ago, MTN Nigeria has been involved in an imbroglio with Nigeria’s indigenous telecoms company, GLOBACOM, owned by Dr. Michael Adenuga Jr. It threatened to disconnect Glo users from calling MTN numbers, over a supposed N6 billion debt, until the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) brokered peace, giving a 21-day period to restore parity.
It is also on record that Omokri has consistently advocated a delisting of MTN in Nigeria while Glo is prioritized as it is a wholely-owned Nigerian product.
