MTN Nigeria has spent decades building itself into the country's dominant telecom operator. It is now discovering that its South African ownership, a non-issue for most of that history, has become a political liability it cannot control.
Senator Adams Oshiomhole has called on the federal government to seize control of MTN Nigeria and revoke the operating licenses of South African-owned businesses, including MultiChoice's DStv, in a major escalation of Nigeria's response to renewed xenophobic attacks against Nigerians in South Africa. Speaking during Senate plenary, Oshiomhole argued: "This Senate should adopt a position that MTN, a South African company that is carting away millions of dollars from Nigeria every day, that Nigeria nationalize it and withdraw its licence." He extended the same demand to DStv, accusing the company of economic exploitation.
The crisis triggering this political pressure is severe and ongoing. More than 3,000 Malawians, including hundreds of children, have been staying in an open field in Durban after fleeing escalating anti-immigrant threats and attacks. Nigeria repatriated a first group of 260 nationals, with Ghana, Mozambique, and Malawi carrying out similar operations. Groups armed with sticks, whips, and shields have marched through parts of South Africa demanding that foreigners without papers leave by June 30. Senator Oshiomhole's call followed reports that at least 130 Nigerians had registered for voluntary repatriation, while Ghana formally wrote to the African Union requesting that the attacks be added to the AU summit agenda.
The market reaction to the political rhetoric was immediate, even if the underlying threat was contested. The Senator's remarks triggered immediate anxiety in the financial sector, with shares of MTN Nigeria on the Nigerian Exchange seeing a sharp decline as investors weighed the possibility of state intervention. Oshiomhole also suggested a 30-day boycott of MTN's services as an alternative or complementary measure.
Nigeria's Senate leadership, notably, declined to back the proposal. Senate President Godswill Akpabio said the National Assembly would not support a resolution targeting South African businesses, calling instead for compensation for victims and the formation of a joint ad hoc committee to engage South African lawmakers.
The economic case against retaliation has been made forcefully by analysts. FSL Capital's Ag. Head of Research, Nnoruga Onyedikachi, said a blanket shutdown of South African blue-chip companies operating in Nigeria is neither viable nor effective, arguing the xenophobic attacks are largely localised incidents driven by unemployment and inequality rather than government policy, meaning targeting multinational corporations would not pressure the actual perpetrators. CPPE's Muda Yusuf added that major South African firms, including MTN, Shoprite, MultiChoice, and Stanbic IBTC, have created thousands of jobs in Nigeria, and that disrupting those businesses would hurt Nigerian workers, suppliers, and consumers who depend on them.
The scale of what is actually at stake for MTN locally undercuts the "foreign company" framing at the centre of the political argument. MTN Nigeria is listed on the Nigerian Exchange, led by a 95% Nigerian executive team, and accounts for 89.5 million mobile subscribers with over 51% market share. In 2026, covering the 2025 financial year, MTN paid ₦878.7 billion in taxes and levies and proposed ₦419.91 billion in dividends to shareholders.
This is not unfamiliar territory for the company. Similar reprisal attacks in 2019 saw mobs invade several MTN outlets in Lagos, with the company again subjected to similar treatment during the 2020 EndSARS protests.
For MTN, the underlying business risk is no longer about network performance, tariff regulation, or competitive pressure from Airtel. It is about whether a diplomatic crisis playing out 6,000 kilometres away in Durban and Mossel Bay can translate into political pressure strong enough to threaten its operating licence in its most important market. The Senate has so far resisted the most extreme version of that pressure. Whether that restraint holds depends entirely on how the unrest in South Africa and Pretoria's response to it develop in the weeks ahead.
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