MTN Nigeria said it invested N900bn in network expansion and maintenance in 2025 and plans to spend more than N1tn in 2026.
The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Karl Toriola, argued that the recent tariff increase was necessary to prevent the telecommunications company and the wider industry from slipping into insolvency.
Toriola disclosed this during the company’s recent stakeholder engagement on internet data spending, themed ‘Data on Trial’, held in Lagos. The event featured a law court-style debate session hosted by Ebuka Obi-Uchendu and attended by content creators, MTN subscribers and regulators.
Speaking on the rationale for the tariff adjustment, Toriola said the company faced severe financial pressure before the increase was approved. He explained, “The tariff increase was implemented for one primary reason: to allow the industry to survive. At the point in time when the tariff increase was implemented, we practically could not pay our bills.”
He added, “There was not enough money coming into MTN’s accounts to pay our bills for diesel, rent and software licences. We were effectively bankrupt. Without that tariff increase, we would have had to shut down the network.”
Toriola said the company was technically insolvent at the time, with negative equity, and warned that network operations were at risk.
According to him, “In the period when the tariff increase was implemented, technically speaking, we were insolvent. We were in negative equity, for those who are financial people. So it was necessary for the industry first just to survive. It was really on the verge of breaking down. And then to allow us to continue to invest.”
The MTN boss said the company invested N900bn in 2025 and would exceed that figure this year as it continues to expand and maintain its infrastructure.
According to him, “Last year, we invested N900bn. This year, we’re going to invest in excess of a trillion. We invest more in the expansion and maintenance of this company than we make in profits.”
Toriola also linked network quality challenges to the country’s operating environment, citing vandalism, insecurity and disruptions at telecom sites.
The MTN boss remarked, “We’re in a country where area boys will block us from network sites. We’re in a country where someone, for the heck of it, will light up a telecom manhole that will affect 30,000 subscribers, or base stations serving up to two million people.”
Despite the challenges, he maintained that MTN delivers services comparable to international standards. According to him, “I still believe that I’m proud that we provide pretty much a global standard of service.”
On complaints about data costs, Toriola argued that mobile operators cannot sustainably offer unlimited data packages because of capacity constraints.
The MTN Nigeria chief said, “We cannot give unlimited internet data to everyone, as much as we would desire it. We will not be able to build the networks that we will use in any way whatsoever.”
He further claimed that data prices in Nigeria remain among the lowest globally despite the tariff review. According to him, “Go and check in Kenya, go and check in Congo, go and check across the world, and tell me if you are not going to tell me that data in Nigeria is one of the cheapest in the world, even after the tariff increase.”
The Chief Customer Relations and Experience Officer, Ugonwa Nwonye, said the engagement aimed to educate subscribers on how data is consumed and provide tools to help them track usage.
She said video-streaming applications such as TikTok remain among the biggest drivers of data consumption and noted that device settings, video quality and automatic backups often contribute to faster depletion.
According to Nwonye, “We have built a data calculator. We have built a data dashboard personalised to our customers. And we’re going to make this available by the end of this month so that customers can also go to such places and look at how much data they’ve spent on different applications.”
She added that MTN would take the campaign nationwide over the next six months to improve consumer understanding of data usage.
On her part, the Chief Marketing Officer, Onyinye Ikenna-Emeka, said the programme was designed to address long-standing concerns about data depletion, expiry and transparency.
According to her, “The whole idea is to provide that clarity, the understanding, the transparency, and the behind-the-scenes of exactly what happens when we are in the process of using data.”
She said MTN would continue engaging customers and improving transparency around data usage patterns. According to Ikenna-Emeka, the company currently serves more than 87 million subscribers across Nigeria.
One of the participants at the event, Yemisi Odusanya, popularly known as Sisi Yemmie, said she arrived at the engagement frustrated by what she perceived as rapid data depletion. “I was very angry when I was coming,” Odusanya said. “Because I’m like, we just subscribed, let’s say two days ago, and now it is expired.”
However, the content creator said the explanations provided during the session helped her better understand how data is consumed across multiple devices and applications.
According to Odusanya, “After the explanations, I was like, you know what, this actually makes sense. I’m going home to go and reconfigure everything.”
The MTN team fielded questions from more users on internet costs and usage. Some users in attendance included entertainment content creators Peller and Jarvis, tech influencer Fisayo Fosudo, and legal influencer/content creator Timi Agbaje.
Read the full article here
