MTN Nigeria has been accused of manipulating the call logs between the country’s suspended President of the Court of Appeal (PCA), Justice Isa Salami, and chieftains of the major opposition party, the Action Congress of Nigeria.
Segun Oni, a former Governor in Nigeria, has asked the Abuja Federal High Court to revoke the operating license of MTN as a result of allegations it failed to release the full Call Data Records (CDRs) of Justice Salami to aid the investigation carried out by the National Judicial Council (NJC) on allegations levied against some of its justices.
In the lawsuit, MTN and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) were named as co-defendants.
Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a former Governor of Osun state, and the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had filed a similar lawsuit against MTN, but it was thrown out by the Abuja Federal High Court.
According to the suit which will be brought before Justice Adamu Bello on February 25, the plaintiffs said three other network service providers provided the call data records spanning as long as six months.
The plaintiff statement read: “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 5 months.”
According to the plaintiff, MTN has become corporately involved in politics and has breached ethics, therefore deviating from the principal objectives upon which the company was registered and granted license by the Second Defendant.
