Sunday Aborisade, Abuja
Chairman, Senate Committee on Communications, Senator Gilbert Nnaji, said on Sunday the upper chamber was determined to unmask the government officials who facilitated the payment of N50bn by MTN Nigeria Communications Limited.
Nnaji also said the Senate would find out why the telecommunications company was directed to pay the money into a recovery account instead of routing it through the Nigerian Communications Commission.

The lawmaker, who spoke with reporters in Abuja on Sunday, said the clarification became necessary following the reports that the matter had been laid to rest due the absence of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), at the committee’s investigative hearing on Thursday.
But the firm paid the government N50bn as part of a deal to resolve the matter.The NCC had in October 2015 imposed a fine of N1.04tn on MTN for contravening the directive on the deactivation of 5.2 million unregistered subscribers on its network.
Nnaji said   the payment was “not only at variance with the anti-corruption stance of the Federal Government but a deliberate attempt to undermine Nigeria’s integrity and subject her to public ridicule in a bid to impress South Africa”.
Nnaji noted that the committee queried the intentions of the AGF for allegedly unilaterally opening a new account with a name that had no correlations with the issue at hand and ordered MTN to credit same, despite the existence of the Treasury Single Account.
He said, “If there were no ulterior motives, the Ministry of Justice could have gone through streamlined processes of among others, routing the money through the NCC with sufficient notice to the Ministry of Communications instead of deliberately sidelining the major stakeholders on the matter and circumventing the extant laws guiding public financial administration.
“This is one transaction that has generated public suspicion compelling the committee to invite all relevant stakeholders to this meeting for adequate clarifications to be made on the issue.
“Issues emanating from the foregoing are: into which account did MTN pay the N50bn and which government agency acknowledged the payment?”