MTN smiles to the bank as subscribers wail buckets of tears — by Kelechi Deca
Carl Toriola and his team are patting themselves on the back, popping champagnes and and grinning with excitement.
Who wouldn’t. MTN Nigeria reported a Profit After Tax (PAT) of ₦1.17 trillion for the nine months ended September 30, 2026, representing a 55.3% increase compared to the same period in 2025.
Service revenue rose 23.7% to ₦4.6 trillion with total revenue reaching ₦4.7 trillion, even as earnings per share increased 55.3% to ₦550, while subscriber base hit 94.7 million with 57.2 million active data users.
But when you sit quietly and analyse the figures surreptitiously examining this money bearing tree MTN is harvesting from, you’d see just one major branch bearing most of the fruits to the extent it has become low hanging.
And that is the surging data consumption, with average monthly usage per active data user rising to 15.3 GB. Yet the active data users are getting zero value for their investment.
They are not consuming more data with “clear eyes,” they are constantly armtwisted into exceeding their budgeted monthly expenditure for data as a result of tweakings in the system by MTN that lead to unaccountable data depletion.
Most Nigerian subscribers recharge their data in years. MTN doesn’t care, NCC doesn’t mind.
If you are a subscriber to any MTN services, you’d know how many times you’ve been had by the telco with a near monopolistic chockhold on the Nigerian market.
From the time you load your data, the countdown begins and before you can keep tabs, everything vanishes.
Presently,millions of subscribers have lodged complaints to both the MTN and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), with nothing tangible to show.
Yet MTN smiling all the way to the bank while subscribers are left holding the bag. Time has come to call this relationship what it is: exploitative.
MTN’s profit windfall did not come from magic; it came from the pockets of Nigerians who are sowing in tears, paying more than ever for services that frequently fail to deliver.
The financial engineering behind these profits is clear. In January 2025, the NCC approved a tariff hike that saw the average cost of 1GB of data jump from roughly N287.50 to over N431.
MTN wasted no time adjusting its bundles, with some plans seeing effective increases exceeding 100% to 200%.
Subscribers are paying premium prices, yet the experience on the ground remains riddled with frustration, unexplained data depletion, and a pervasive sense that the meter is running faster than the usage.
When confronted with these grievances, MTN’s leadership has offered explanations that strain credulity. CEO Karl Toriola recently claimed that “unlimited data does not exist anywhere in the world” unless one pays exorbitant sums.
This is factually incorrect. Millions of consumers globally enjoy genuinely unlimited or high-capacity mobile plans at fractions of the relative cost Nigerians bear. Even across many African countries, subscribers enjoy unlimited data.
Toriola’s assertion is not a technical truth, rather a convenient excuse to justify capped, expensive bundles while the company posts record revenues.
The regulatory environment has not provided the necessary shield for consumers. While the NCC occasionally queries operators on quality of service, subscribers continue to report sudden data drains.
Recently, KAA Truth presenter cried out against this criminal depletion of data with thousands of his followers agreeing and sharing their own ugly experiences with MTN.
He flagged the depletion of 708GB out of an 800GB annual plan in just over three months. When a user can burn through nearly 90% of a year’s data in a quarter, the problem is not just “background app refresh,” as NFC and MTN is fond of giving as excuse.
It points to a systemic accountability gap. That’s why consumer advocacy groups have accused the NCC like every other regulatory agency in Nigeria of prioritizing revenue collection over protecting subscribers, leaving Nigerians to fight billion-naira corporations alone.
MTN’s profits are real.It came majorly from opaque billing to tariffs that outpace inflation, and the suffering of its subscribers is equally real.
And until regulators move beyond gentle queries and actively audit billing systems and enforce consumer compensation, the bank smiles will only widen, and the tears of the Nigerian subscriber will continue to flow.
Development is not an accident.
Everything is connected to everything.
