ABUJA, October 27, 2026.
MTN says it is not stealing data as customers at its Abuja forum demand clearer billing records, independent verification and compensation for service outages.
“We’re not stealing your data,” MTN Nigeria’s General Manager for Network Performance and Quality Assurance, Mike Ndukwe, told a public forum in Abuja on Monday.
Ndukwe spoke at Data on Trial, a courtroom-style event where MTN invited customers to question how it measures and charges for data. A moderator acted as judge, customers formed the “prosecution” and MTN executives the defence. A fact-checking desk was set up to test claims from the floor.
“But the honest answer is that data is not taken without an action, either your action or your phone’s,” Ndukwe said. He added that MTN understood how customers felt, “especially right now when everything costs money”.
What MTN said at the Data on Trial
Ndukwe said his aim was to “replace suspicion with clarity”. He said the request that opens a TikTok video uses less than 1MB, but delivering a 15-second clip can take between 2MB and 20MB depending on resolution. Basic WhatsApp chats use under 2KB, he said, but data use rises with media in groups and status views. On 4G and 5G, he said, apps default to higher resolution and autoplay loads the next video automatically.
He said Nigerians’ social media data traffic was 13.2 million terabytes in 2025 and 8.52 million terabytes in the first half of 2026, which he put at roughly 43 per cent year on year. No source for the figures was given at the event.
MTN Nigeria’s chief executive, Karl Toriola, said he would not make a case for data, because that would amount to a closing statement. He said the company had heard customers’ “perception of disappearing data”, and that “this process is about building trust”.
MTN pointed customers to its MyMTN app for real-time usage and alerts, and to FibreX for unlimited data for heavy users.
What customers asked MTN at Data on Trial
The customers’ lead counsel asked, “Will there be remediation today?” and predicted that “data will be guilty”. Audience members raised failed downloads, bundle validity, personalised offers on *121#, FibreX pricing and speed, unexplained overnight deductions, independent verification of charges and compensation for outages.
Representatives of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) attended. An NCC representative said “there is an information gap between service providers and consumers” and pointed to its Consumer Parliament as a channel for complaints.
