Why Teleology can’t take ownership of 9mobile now, by Dambatta

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has explained why Teleology Holdings has not taken over the ownership of 9Mobile.

Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta spoke yesterday in a chat with The Guardian in Abuja.

He cited the debts profile of 9Mobile and ongoing checks on the technical capability of Teleology Holdings, which won the bidding, as well as the issue of registration of Teleology with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

Danbatta said checks were currently ongoing on the technical capability of Teleology and it’s owners to run the 9Mobile network.

According to him: “Beyond that, there are pockets of debts on the part of 9Mobile that must be met before the transfer of license, frequency and shares could be made.

“9Mobile wrote to us for the transfer of shares from EMTS to the Trustee (United Capital).

But we told them that some issues needed to be sorted out before the transfer, as 9Mobile owed AOL for 2016 and 2017, which is a total of N12 billion.”

The NCC boss disclosed that the firm owed Numbering Fees of N1 billion and Spectrum Fees of N2.3 billion, adding that so far, the management has paid 50 per cent of the Spectrum Fees and of AOL and Numbering Fees.

“We have agreed that until the completion of the payments of these debts, we cannot concur with their letter seeking the transfer of the shares from United Capital to Teleology,” he said.

He commended the management of 9Mobile for doing everything possible to ensure the completion of the deal.

Dambatta disclosed that in the history of NCC, there had never been any precedent where transfer of equity from one firm to another was done without ensuring that all statutory requirements were met.