•Gbenga Adebayo, ALTON Chairman

The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has commended the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission for suspending enforcement of the Digital, Electronic, Online, or Non-traditional Consumer Lending (DEON) regulations against telecommunications operators.

ALTON described the decision as a critical step towards restoring confidence in Nigeria’s regulatory environment.This comes as airtime and data credit services resume across several of Nigeria’s mobile networks.

Airtel Nigeria has fully restored airtime credit to its subscribers, and Glo has also brought its services back online in recent days.

The restoration follows weeks of disruption that left approximately 40 million active users, overwhelmingly prepaid subscribers in the lower-income bracket, without access to the small airtime and data advances they rely on daily.

Gbenga Adebayo, ALTON Chairman, said that the FCCPC’s decision reflects the kind of institutional discipline that the sector and the broader investment community had been looking for.

“We commend the FCCPC for taking this decision in the interests of Nigerian consumers and the telecommunications industry,” Adebayo said.

“Suspending the DEON regulations as they apply to telecom services recognises that the established regulatory architecture, with the NCC as the sector’s primary regulator, is the appropriate framework for governing these products.

That recognition matters enormously for industry stability and investor confidence.”

Adebayo noted that the disruption had exposed how deeply embedded airtime credit is in the daily economic activity of millions of Nigerians.“

What this episode demonstrated is that airtime credit is not a financial product in the way regulators initially characterised it.

It is economic infrastructure that approximately 40 million people use regularly, with the vast majority of them at the base of the economy. Removing that infrastructure, even temporarily, had consequences that went far beyond the telecom sector.”

The airtime credit market, estimated at N300 to N400 billion annually, was effectively frozen in early April when MTN, Airtel, Glo, and T2mobile suspended their offerings after an FCCPC enforcement directive required immediate compliance with the DEON framework.

The FCCPC had classified airtime credit as consumer lending, bringing it within the scope of regulations originally designed to curb predatory practices by digital loan applications.

The classification triggered a jurisdictional dispute with the Nigerian Communications Commission, which regulates telecommunications services under the Nigerian Communications Act 2003.

Two Federal High Court orders followed: an interim injunction in Lagos on 15 April, restraining the FCCPC from enforcing DEON against WASPAN members, and a separate order in Abuja on 24 April, restraining MTN and Airtel from interfering with licensed VAS providers’ access to the platform.

The FCCPC’s application to discharge the Lagos injunction was refused on 28 April. Airtel’s decision to move first on restoration has drawn particular attention within the industry.

The operator restored services shortly after the regulatory path cleared, a move several analysts have described as a signal of confidence in the legal and commercial environment. Nigeria’s largest local telco, Globacom, followed within days.

MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest operator by subscriber count with over 95 million subscribers, had not restored its airtime credit services at the time of this report.

Industry sources familiar with the situation say there are no regulatory or legal impediments to restoration, and that MTN’s subscribers, who represent the largest bloc of airtime credit users in the country, are now the most significant group still waiting for service to resume.

Adebayo said ALTON expects full restoration across all networks to follow swiftly.

“The regulatory environment is now clear, and we are confident that full restoration is imminent.

The courts have spoken, the FCCPC has acted responsibly, and two of the four major operators have already restored services. There is no ambiguity left, and we expect every operator to act with the urgency their subscribers deserve.

”Looking ahead, Adebayo called for a structured dialogue between the FCCPC and the NCC to prevent a recurrence.“

The lesson is that Nigeria’s regulatory agencies need formal coordination protocols for services at the intersection of telecommunications and financial products.

The FCCPC’s consumer protection mandate and the NCC’s telecom regulatory mandate can coexist without either displacing the other. We are ready to participate in that conversation and urge both agencies to begin it without delay.”