Nigeria’s biggest mobile phone operator, Mobile Telecommunication, Nigeria (MTN) has threatened to shut down its network due to lingering fuel shortages that have crippled the nation.
The company, the biggest subsidiary of the South Africa-based MTN Group, said it needed a “significant quantity of diesel in the very near future to prevent a shutdown of services across Nigeria.”
It said on its Twitter account @MTNNG: “if diesel supplies are not received within the next 24 hours, the network will be seriously degraded and customers will feel the impact.”
Despite being Africa’s biggest oil producer, Nigeria lacks domestic refineries, forcing crude to be exported and products such as petrol and diesel to be imported.
The MTN’s corporate services executive, Akinwale Goodluck.said that most of the company’s base stations and switches across the country are being powered by diesel which he said is currently running low.
The threat from MTN, which has more than 55-million subscribers, is a sign that businesses are now being hit by the scarcity. [myad]
