A $50 billion lawsuit puts Nigeria’s telecoms industry on trial

For years, the standard Nigerian telecom argument has run in one direction. Telecom service providers argue that a consumer’s data bundle is finished because they used it up. If they disagree, the burden lies with the consumer to prove otherwise.

But a ₦50 billion lawsuit filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja against MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel, MultiChoice and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) seeks to challenge that assumption. For that, it has turned to a section of Nigerian law that has existed since 2018 without ever being tested directly against the telecoms industry.

KaaTruths Podcast Ltd, the plaintiff, is not simply complaining that data disappears too fast. The suit, filed by lead counsel Ogbaga Ogba Immanuel, cites two incidents as evidence.

In one, a ₦30,000 MTN subscription billed to last 30 days went unused after the router supplied for accessing it developed a fault. A request for cancellation, refund or rollover was refused. In the other, a 75GB bundle meant to last a month was recorded as exhausted within seven days, during a period of intermittent network disruption, with no breakdown offered to explain how it was exhausted.

What makes the case significant is Section 145 of the FCCPC Act, which states that where goods or services are alleged to be defective, the burden of proof lies on the undertaking that supplied them, not on the consumer who is complaining.

A consumer protection lawyer, Oladipupo Ige, who reviewed the case, explained why that detail matters more than anything else in the filing.

“This is significant because the provider controls the technical and billing systems,” Ige said. “A consumer ordinarily cannot independently access the operator’s internal records to determine exactly how the data was calculated. Therefore, where a consumer genuinely disputes the exhaustion of a bundle, the provider should be able to substantiate its position with relevant records.”

Applied to telecoms, this means MTN and its co-defendants would be required to demonstrate that a bundle was consumed as billed, rather than the customer being required to disprove it.

Nigerian operators have operated for years as though the opposite were the case, treating a depleted balance as self-evident proof of consumption and leaving customers to argue against a system they have no access to.

What the law actually promises a paying customer

Ige points to Section 130 of the Act as the second pillar of the case. Section 130 (1) entitles a consumer to a service performed to the standard a reasonable person is entitled to expect, and Section 130 (2) allows a consumer to demand that a provider remedy a failure or refund a reasonable portion of the price, calibrated to how badly the service fell short.

“If a consumer pays for 30 days of data but cannot use the service for several days because of a network failure attributable to the provider, there is a legal basis for arguing that the consumer has not received the full benefit of the service paid for,” Ige said, adding that the law does not expressly provide that the subscription must automatically be extended.

Consequently, the appropriate remedy depends on the circumstances and extent of the failure. Applied to a subscriber who loses several days of a 30-day plan to network failure attributable to the provider, this creates an argument that the customer never received the full service they paid for, regardless of what the timer on the account says.

There is a third piece that further strengthens the case. Section 127 (2) of the Act allows a court to strike down a contract term that is excessively one-sided in favour of the seller or so adverse to the consumer that it becomes inequitable. This is the clause that speaks directly to the suit KAA filed.

When a customer exhausts their data early, the network enforces exhaustion. Similarly, when a customer has not finished it after 30 days, the network enforces expiry. Both outcomes favour the same party. Oladipupo’s assessment is careful here and stops short of calling every data-expiry clause automatically unfair.

“I would not say that every data-expiry clause is automatically unfair,” he said. “The question would be whether, in its particular context and operation, the term creates an excessive or inequitable disadvantage for the consumer.”

That caveat matters, because it means the case will likely be decided on the specific facts KAA has pleaded rather than on a sweeping principle, but it also means those facts, the fault-riddled router and the seven-day exhaustion of a monthly bundle, are now the test case for an entire industry practice.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) already has a framework that could settle disputes like this without a courtroom. The Quality of Service Regulations of 2024 set out how network performance should be measured and how the NCC can pull that data directly from operator systems rather than relying on the operator’s own account of events. That regulatory machinery exists. What has been missing, Ige suggested, is clarity forcing anyone to use it.

“The underlying principle should be that a consumer should not automatically lose the value of a service they have already paid for where the provider’s own failure prevented them from enjoying that service,” he said.

If the Federal High Court agrees that the burden of proof belongs to the networks, the practical effect reaches well beyond MTN. Every telecom operator, every pay-TV subscription, and every prepaid service in Nigeria currently runs on the same assumption, that the provider’s meter is correct until the customer proves it wrong. This case asks a court to say, formally, that the opposite has been true under Nigerian law all along.

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