Revealed: How Nigeria blackmailed MTN to betray Biafra

MTN betrays Biafra

By Tim Tochukwu

For Biafra Choice Writers

For months, Nigerian government battled South African telecommunication company, MTN; about what it called the company’s refusal to disconnect subscribers with faulty SIM-Card registration. But few people knew that the real reason behind the whole hullabaloo was the government’s attempt to have the company breach the privacy of its Biafran subscribers by taping their lines.

Nigerian government started pressurizing the company long before October last year. However, by October, it applied its greatest pressure by having its National Communication Commission (NCC) to slam the company with a huge fine of $5. 2 Billion (Equivalent of N1. 4 Trillion). NCC had claimed the company failed to disconnect millions of its unregistered subscribers at the end of the August deadline set by the regulatory body. It said the penalty was N200, 000 for each of the unregistered 5.1 million SIM cards. But MTN was not the only company in Nigeria with similar challenge.

Now, recent findings from Biafra Choice Writers revealed that MTN was a victim of international politics between Biafra and Nigeria. NCC was just using the so-called penalty to blackmail the company for refusing to tape the telephone lines of Biafrans who were organizing unprecedented worldwide independence coordination, a kind that had never been seen in human history.

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Interestingly, in spite of this revelation, Biafrans who reacted to news of the blackmail insisted that realization that MTN was a victim of blackmail from Nigerian government would not make them change their stance against the company. Donald Okechukwu, an IPOB member in London, told Biafra Choice Writers that “MTN has played a terrible role in history that I will not forgive them. How can a company from South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s country, stop the freedom movement of an African country – Biafra? I am disappointed! No matter what it would have taken them, they should have resisted the blackmail” he said.

It is to be recalled that the leadership of Biafra had cautioned Biafrans against the use of MTN in their activism work. Uche Mefor, Deputy Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) recently said the South African company was being used against Biafrans, and advised his fellow Biafrans to avoid MTN because it had become a killer network for Biafrans.

According to him, all arrests and tracking of Biafrans were done on MTN platform. “Every MTN number is with DSS so we must warn our people especially principal officers to avoid completely MTN line” he said.

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He also said: “Handsets and SIM cards should be destroyed after every four weeks. Do not save people's numbers against their names because of extra judicial abductions. We need to go public with this. MTN is working against us and we owe it to our people to make this public”.