INDICATIONS emerged yesterday, that the last surviving Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operator in Nigeria, Visafone has laid off majority of its workforce and is winding down majority of its operations in the country.

The Guardian gathered that apart from what seems to be an aftermath of a downtrodden economy, the acquisition of Visafone by the embattled MTN Nigeria, might have largely contributed to mass sack in the CDMA firm.

MTN was reported to have sealed the acquisition deal on Tuesday. The firm had last year secretly started the process of acquiring Visafone targeting its 700MHz spectrum and the LTE-compliant spectrum acquired by the CDMA firm months back.

The Guardian, which earlier reported the planned acquisition last May, gathered through an insider that the South African telecommunications giant was not taking along the purchase of the CDMA company with its liabilities.

When The Guardian made enquiries from MTN yesterday to confirm the state of the deal, which had subsequently led to the sack of majority of the CDMA firm’s workforce, MTN neither denied nor confirmed the deal, but said the management was already working on a statement that would be made available to journalists either by yesterday or today.

But as at press time yesterday, the statement was yet to be released.

The Guardian also gathered yesterday that the order giving to Visafone by MTN was that the CDMA firm should sack all its workforce, stressing it will prefer to run the new entity with MTN workers.

A very senior management staff of MTN had last year confirmed to The Guardian when the news for broke that it was a done deal. “MTN has sealed the Visafone deal. We shall get to you officially in the nearest future about it,” she stated.

Indeed, thousands of Visafone’s employees have been disengaged from their jobs with effect from January 5, 2016, with just three months pay as severance. The only categories of staff said to be left are the personnel on the transmission team.

One of the affected workers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claimed that the sack came as a surprise to majority of them.

“Though, we learnt that the management would downsize, but later in 2016. It is however, surprising that they are sending majority of us away so early in the year. Though they paid three months severance benefit, but should it be this way.