Robbing Billions to pay Millions (MTN Nigeria)

MTN NIGERIA: ROBBING BILLIONS TO PAY MILLIONS
By
Comrade Aloysius Attah.

In my undergraduate days in the department of political science, I was taught that a Multinational Corporation is a firm with subsidiaries, which extend the production and marketing of its firm beyond the boundaries of any one country. Apart from being one of the world’s largest firms, they are characterized by their oligopolistic nature, dominating markets because of their size, their access to financial resources, control of technology and possession of a special differentiated product. One of their most striking features is profit maximization, ipsofacto, they are neither altruistic nor benevolent.

On the other hand, I also learnt that capitalism is a system of economic organization featured by the private ownership and the use for private profit of man made and nature made capitals.

The capitalist system refers to the particular stage in the development of industry and legal institutions in which the bulk of the workers find themselves divorced from the ownership of the instruments of production in such a way as to pass into the position of wage earners whose subsistence, security and personal freedom seem dependent on the will of a relatively small proportion of the nation namely- those who own and through their legal ownership, control of the land, the machinery and the labour forces of the community, and do so with the object of making for themselves, individual and private gains.
Between Multinational Companies and capitalism exist a common thread that binds both firmly known as profit motive or profit maximization.

Nigeria today may not be a pure capitalist country, but since the advent of GSM revolution in the country, MTN communications has become Nigeria’s capitalist enclave and Africa’s own Multinational Corporation in Nigeria. No doubt, they have been source of capital and empowerment to many but at the same time constitutes a major agent of profit repatriation and resource out flow.

At the onset of Global System of Mobile Communications in Nigeria, even though the now defunct ECONET wireless was the first to acquire license, MTN utilized its business acumen through wider coverage to rip-off Nigerians with high cost of sim-packs, per minute billings and embargo on lower rate of recharge cards.

It was the entrant of Globacom into the market that made us realize the possibility that GSM calls can be charged at per second rate, a condition MTN earlier told Nigerians that it’s unrealistic. The crash of simpacks and the introduction of lower naira values for recharge cards through healthy competition by other service providers is no longer news.

Talking about promotions, subscribers to MTN network that participated in their Treasure Hunt promotion heaved sighs of relief since the promotion ended in March this year, even though they didn’t win, their phone message inbox can now have space for genuine text messages instead of the “attack” unleashed by MTN through its various text messages urging people to keep texting to win.

In the line of my duty as a Right Activist, I came across a divisional police officer in Asaba Delta State who was so enthralled by the sweet coded texts during the promotion that he exhausted over sixty thousand naira worth of recharge cards to participate in the promo.

My mouth was left wide agape when he showed me the used cards yet he didn’t win even a toy phone. I’ve read various defenses put up by MTN project officers on Brand and Communications in response to complaints raised by aggrieved participants in the promo which some described as “open deceit” But try as mush as they could to convince us, the participants learnt a bitter lesson that the promotion was more of a rip off than an empowerment.

During promotions, companies including other GSM service providers normally devise the method of “the more you recharge/buy, the more your chances of winning” but not for MTN, their own method is usually, “text to a specified number and N100 naira will be deducted from your account immediately”.

A single trial and you will be “hypnotized” to try more and more, their coded machine will always bombard you with more enticing customized words like “Emeka we want you to win, just text ‘WIN’ and you might be the lucky one” “Tonight is your turn to join the millionaire’s club”, “we are going out free plasma TV’s reply “Plasma” and you win”, “Sony Ericson phones are still available, text “SE” and you might get it”, “you now have 900 points, text “points” and get double reward” etc.

As the sensational text messages kept flowing, gullible Nigerians kept exhausting one recharge card after the other, at the end of the day, we saw the names and faces of the new millionaires that emerged from the promo on television and newspapers but MTN never told Nigerian how many billions was fleeced from the participants.

The last Christmas and Easter celebrations was hell for most subscribers in the MTN network, while other network providers rewarded customers with free airtime, cash prizes and gifts, MTN rewarded us with poor network, dropped calls, inability to recharge or access balance, failure delivery of text messages after the cost have been deducted etc.

Their customer services relations remains the poorest and longest in delay, yet we endure but even as I write this, a text just came to my phone, lo and behold; the contents read “text Easter to 33112 for special Easter SMS for your friends and family, each sms cost N30, Happy Easter Nigerians”. I ask myself, when shall this people stop this exploitation?

Another area where MTN should stop fooling us again is on the issue of coverage. Everyday we are inundated with the advert slogan; MTN everywhere you go” but I beg to disagree, MTN is not everywhere you go, recently I traveled to Aji village, one of the prominent towns in Enugu Ezike, Igbo Eze North L.G.A Enugu State, and to my chagrin, the place has no network coverage by MTN. Agreed that MTN might have done much in its corporate social responsibly through the MTN foundation and some of us are still their loyal subscribers without even intending to drop their sim-packs but let the truth be told, they are profiteering on our collective contributions.

Some also allege that MTN does everything and gets away with it without sanctions because of their fraternity with the powers that be in Nigeria.
We hope the Nigeria Communications Commission is watching.

Comrade Aloysius Attah
Chairman, Civil Liberties Organization (CLO)
Anambra State Branch
08035090548
pricemmy@yahoo.com