FG rakes in 56.78bn from spectrum fees in 3years

Jonah Iboma
The Federal Government has realized a total of N56.78bn from spectrum sales made by the Nigerian Communications Commission between 2007 and May 2009.
According to a document released by the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, a copy of which was made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, a breakdown shows that the commission paid N51,102,583,704.68 in 2007 into the Consolidated Revenue Fund ,while the sums of N2,375,138,083.00 and N3,279,350,270.78, were paid in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
The document with reference number D(R&F)584/Vol.1/99 dated 22 June, 2009 and which was released by the AGF’s office following the contentious auction of 2.3GHz spectrum by the NCC in May 2009, was signed by the A.R. Ogah, the Director, Revenue and Investment at the AGF’s office.
The document had been released by the AGF to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission following claims by the Ministry of Communications that it received petitions protesting the process for the auction of four slots in the 2.3GHz band of the electromagnetic spectrum by NCC.
Meanwhile, the AGF letter has stated that the NCC could grant waivers to telecom operators provided the law establishing it stated so. This position represents a major departure from the one adduced by the Minister of Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili, in her call for the NCC to stop the process.
She said that a petition alleged that the grant of waiver to Mobitel, which was one of the companies that won the bid for 2.3GHz spectrum, was not proper as it was said to be indebted to the Federal government and that this necessitated a stoppage of the auction.
Among other things, it was alleged that the time given by the commission for shortlisted companies to pay the reserved price of N1.3bn was too short and that the process lacked transparency, especially given the short period that companies had to pay
Meanwhile speaking at a press conference in Lagos on Tuesday, the President and Chief executive Officer of Mobitel Limited, Mr. Johnson Salako, has said that the company was not interested in getting into any contention with government over the auction issue.
According to him, Mobitel is now simply is waiting for the allocation of frequencies based on its successful bid for it to commence service. He added that for three years, the old Mobitel ceased to exist and that it went through a lot of pain to acquire the firm and had invested over N4bn into the firm to ensure that it successfully paid up all its debts to
Salako said the firm was ready to rollout service in October as it had placed order for the equipment to enable it to commence services.
The Chief Commercial officer, Mobitel, Mr. Okon Iyanam, said the firm had done a lot of work to get ready to offer a fourth generation mobile service and that it was unfortunate that the current problems had held back its plans
He said, “We shed tears for the kind of investment that we have made but which have been held up by the current problems.”