Five years after a little-known company emerged from Nigeria's 5G auction with a $273.6 million spectrum licence, Mafab is now seeking to transfer that spectrum to MTN. The transaction revives questions about how the company financed the licence, what it actually built, what regulatory concessions it received and whether public money was ever involved. But the documentary trail also challenges some of the most dramatic claims circulating about the company.
There are two different stories about Mafab Communications.
The first is the story that has circulated widely: a tiny company with almost no visible telecom footprint somehow obtained one of Nigeria's most valuable spectrum assets, allegedly paid $273.6 million for it, received government support and then failed to build the network before attempting to sell the spectrum to MTN.
The second story is what the available documents actually show.
That record is more complicated—and, in some respects, more revealing.
Mafab did pay the $273.6 million, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission, the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission and other records.
But the question of where the money came from remains far more interesting.
There is also documentary evidence that Mafab was extraordinarily small. A PenCom compliance record lists only six employees in 2022.
Its own proposed financing plan envisioned raising hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and more than a billion dollars in debt.
It subsequently struggled to deploy the network it promised.
And now, in September 2026, it is reportedly negotiating a transfer of its spectrum assets to MTN.
The result is a legitimate investigative question:
Did Nigeria auction scarce public spectrum to a company that was never adequately capitalised to build a competing network—or was Mafab always intended to be an investment vehicle whose most valuable asset would eventually change hands?
The evidence does not yet prove the latter.
But the paper trail gives journalists plenty to investigate.
The first question: Did Mafab really pay $273.6 million?
This is the question at the centre of the controversy.
And based on the available evidence, the answer is yes.
The NCC announced in February 2022 that both MTN and Mafab had paid $273.6 million each for their 100 MHz 3.5 GHz spectrum allocations.
The Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission subsequently published the same confirmation, stating that both companies had made full payment. The auction winners had initially paid a $19.74 million intention-to-bid deposit, leaving a balance of $253.86 million.
The NCC later repeated the claim in an official statement, saying Mafab fulfilled the payment condition in February 2022 and formally received its licence on February 22, 2022.
The Federal Government's own account also supports this.
In January 2023, then Communications and Digital Economy Minister Isa Pantami said the Federal Government had generated $820.8 million from the 5G licensing process.
So there is a substantial documentary trail contradicting the simple claim that Mafab never paid.
But that does not answer the most important financial question.
It merely moves the investigation one step deeper.
Where did Mafab get $273.6 million?
This is where the story becomes genuinely interesting.
Before the payment deadline, Mafab's financial capacity was openly questioned.
BusinessDay reported in January 2022 that Mafab's proposed financing plan involved raising $350 million in equity to finance the spectrum licence and associated project costs.
But the company's ambitions were much larger.
Its proposed capital plan included approximately $1.59 billion in debt, taking the intended total funding programme to about $1.9 billion.
The plan contemplated deployment to thousands of sites and a subscriber base reaching 7.5 million over five years.
That means Mafab was not claiming that it would finance the licence from ordinary operating revenue.
It was trying to raise capital.
And there is now an extraordinary first-person account from one of the businessmen involved.
Thomas Etuh, who was an early investor in Mafab, later told BusinessDay that his group raised the $273.6 million and that he personally invested $100 million.
He said the group initially had to raise the $19.7 million bid deposit, then subsequently raised the balance required for the licence. He also said he had borrowed money against his Eurobond and that his group had committed to underwriting part of the transaction.
That account is important because it provides a plausible financing trail for the payment.
It also raises another question:
If Mafab's early investors were capable of raising hundreds of millions of dollars privately, who were all the investors and lenders behind the transaction?
That is where an investigative journalist should go next.
Not to social-media speculation.
To the banking records.
Follow the money
The payment of a licence fee is only half of the story.
The real investigation should reconstruct the transaction from beginning to end.
Investigators should obtain:
- Mafab's bank records surrounding the February 2022 payment.
- The payment instruction and beneficiary account.
- NCC's official receipt.
- The CBN exchange rate used to calculate the naira equivalent.
- The source accounts from which the money originated.
- Loan agreements used to finance the payment.
- Equity subscription agreements.
- Shareholder registers before and after the payment.
- Mafab's audited financial statements.
- Tax records.
- Related-party transactions.
- Any guarantees or collateral used to obtain financing.
The auction rules themselves provide a useful starting point.
The NCC's Information Memorandum stated that bidders could participate even if they were not existing licensed network operators. Successful new entrants would receive a Unified Access Service Licence subject to the applicable licence fee. The spectrum reserve price was $273.6 million per 100 MHz lot.
In other words, Mafab did not necessarily have to be a huge telecom company before the auction.
The regulatory framework explicitly allowed new entrants.
That weakens one version of the allegation.
But it makes another question more important:
What financial due diligence did the regulator perform on a new entrant bidding for a $273.6 million national spectrum asset?
The six-employee problem
Here is one of the most striking pieces of evidence in the entire story.
PenCom's published list of employers with compliance certificates records Mafab Communications Limited as having six employees in 2022.
Six employees.
That does not automatically mean Mafab was incapable of running a telecommunications network.
Telecom companies routinely outsource infrastructure construction, tower operations, engineering, managed services, customer support and other functions.
Indeed, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency's description of Mafab's proposed 5G deployment shows that the company was looking for vendors capable of delivering a turnkey network, including possible outsourced or managed operations.
So “six employees” does not prove anything illegal.
But it is highly relevant to understanding the company's business model.
A company with six employees holding a $273.6 million spectrum asset was never going to build a nationwide network by simply hiring staff and buying equipment.
It needed massive external capital and contractors.
That makes the financing trail even more important.
Mafab was not completely unknown to the regulator
Another part of the story needs nuance.
Mafab was incorporated in 2020 and became a subsidiary of the Althani Group.
BusinessDay reported that Mafab had obtained an International Data Access licence and an Interconnect Exchange licence from the NCC in October 2020.
The newspaper also reported that the company had a very limited publicly visible operational footprint at the time it entered the 5G auction.
The NCC's position was that the auction rules did not exclude new entrants.
And the official Information Memorandum confirms that.
So the criticism should not be:
“How could a new company legally enter the auction?”
The rules allowed it.
The better question is:
Was the regulator's due diligence sufficiently rigorous to establish that this particular new entrant had the financial and technical capacity to deliver the national infrastructure associated with the licence?
That question remains legitimate.
What role did Buhari and Pantami play?
The 5G auction happened under President Muhammadu Buhari's administration, with Isa Ali Pantami serving as Minister of Communications and Digital Economy.
The NCC conducted the auction on December 13, 2021, with MTN and Mafab emerging as winners after Airtel exited the main auction stage. The NCC described the process as transparent and competitive.
Pantami publicly promoted the expected economic benefits of 5G.
The government therefore deserves scrutiny for the policy and regulatory framework, just as the NCC deserves scrutiny for the execution of the auction and subsequent supervision.
But there is an important distinction.
The public record reviewed here does not establish that Buhari or Pantami personally selected Mafab as the winner.
The documented process was an auction.
If anyone alleges that political intervention altered the outcome, that allegation requires evidence—such as communications, directives, conflicts of interest or procurement records—not simply the fact that the auction occurred under their administration.
What about the allegations linking Mafab to powerful political interests?
These allegations existed almost immediately after the auction.
In December 2021, the NCC publicly said it was unaware of any connection between then former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu and Mafab after online claims circulated about his alleged involvement.
BusinessDay also reported that Transparency Nigeria Group had called for an investigation into Mafab's ownership and alleged that the company appeared to have been created for the purpose of obtaining the 5G licence. That was an allegation by the group, not an established finding.
The correct investigative response is therefore straightforward:
Obtain the beneficial ownership records.
Who owned Mafab when it applied for the licence?
Who owned it when it paid the $273.6 million?
Who owned it when the network was launched?
Who owns it today?
And who will own the spectrum after the proposed MTN transaction?
Those four snapshots could tell a much more important story than political speculation.
Did the CBN give Mafab taxpayers' money?
This is where the viral narrative encounters a major evidentiary problem.
I could not find reliable public evidence establishing that the CBN gave Mafab a taxpayer-funded “critical infrastructure support” payment.
That claim should therefore not be presented as established fact.
What the records do show is that Nigeria had government intervention programmes for broadband and infrastructure.
For example, the 2022 NCC budget included ₦41.6 billion described as Federal Government Intervention for Broadband Infrastructure.
But that is not evidence that ₦41.6 billion—or any portion of it—was given to Mafab.
There is an even more important possibility of confusion.
A 2023 DealMakers Africa publication records that the founders of Mafab divested their interests to investors led by the Critical Infrastructure Investment Fund.
That is an investment transaction.
It is not the same thing as the CBN giving Mafab taxpayers' money.
And the available record does not establish that the Critical Infrastructure Investment Fund was a CBN-funded government programme.
Therefore, if the allegation is that public money was specifically transferred to Mafab, the investigation needs a transaction number, beneficiary account, programme name, approval document and payment record.
Without those, the allegation remains unsubstantiated.
But government infrastructure spending still deserves scrutiny
The absence of evidence connecting Mafab to a specific CBN intervention does not mean government support for telecom infrastructure should not be audited.
It should.
Nigeria has historically used public funds and regulatory programmes to support broadband infrastructure.
The question for an investigative journalist is whether Mafab received any benefit—directly or indirectly—from such programmes.
That can be established by checking:
NCC intervention-project records.
Universal Service Provision Fund records.
CBN intervention-loan databases.
Bank lending records.
Federal budget implementation reports.
Auditor-General reports.
Procurement records.
Government guarantees.
If Mafab appears in any of those records as a beneficiary, the next question is how much it received and under what conditions.
If it does not, the taxpayer-money allegation should be withdrawn.
That is what evidence-based investigation looks like.
The real regulatory scandal may be the rollout
If the payment question has a reasonably strong documentary answer, the rollout question is much less tidy.
Mafab was expected to build a 5G network.
But it struggled.
BusinessDay reported in May 2023 that more than a year after the licence award, Mafab had still not commercially launched its service despite launch events in Abuja and Lagos.
The company had struggled with licensing and deployment requirements and had received an extension from the NCC.
Then came the remarkable disagreement between the regulator and independent reporting.
The NCC later said Mafab had launched 5G services in Abuja and Lagos and was targeting six cities: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano and Kaduna. It said it was monitoring the company's infrastructure deployment.
But BusinessDay subsequently reported that it could not find evidence that customers were actually able to buy Mafab's service at the time the NCC defended the company.
That contradiction deserves investigation.
Not because it proves the NCC was “covering” for Mafab.
It does not.
But because regulators should be able to define what “launched” means.
Was a press event enough?
Did the company have functioning base stations?
How many?
Where?
How many paying subscribers?
How much traffic did the network carry?
How much spectrum was actually being used?
How many sites were operational?
What did NCC inspectors physically verify?
Those questions can be answered.
The “use it or lose it” question
This may be the biggest regulatory issue in the entire affair.
Spectrum is not ordinary private property.
It is a scarce public resource managed by the state.
If an operator wins spectrum but fails to deploy meaningful service, the regulator has to decide whether allowing that spectrum to remain dormant serves the public interest.
Nigeria has confronted this problem before.
BusinessDay pointed to the earlier case of Alheri Engineering, which won a 3G licence but did not deploy and later sold the licence to Etisalat for approximately $250 million—far above the $150 million acquisition price.
That precedent makes the Mafab situation particularly important.
If a company acquires valuable spectrum and later transfers it to a larger operator, the economic consequences can be very different from those of a successful new entrant building a competing network.
The regulator therefore has to examine whether the transfer is consistent with the original licensing conditions.
Now MTN wants Mafab's spectrum
This is what has brought the entire story back into the spotlight.
As of September 18, 2026, reports say Mafab is seeking regulatory approval to transfer key spectrum assets to MTN.
The proposed transaction reportedly covers Mafab's 100 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band and 2×20 MHz in the 2.1 GHz band.
The financial terms have not been disclosed publicly, and the transaction requires regulatory approval.
That means the public does not yet know the most interesting number:
How much is MTN paying Mafab?
The original spectrum cost $273.6 million.
But the spectrum may now have a different market value.
If MTN pays more, why?
If it pays less, why?
If the transaction includes other assets, what are they?
If Mafab retains liabilities, what happens to them?
And if the spectrum transfer is approved, do Mafab's original rollout obligations disappear?
Those questions should be answered before approval.
MTN's size makes the competition question unavoidable
The proposed transfer also raises competition issues.
PUNCH reports that MTN already controls about half of Nigeria's mobile market and that additional spectrum could strengthen its capacity relative to competitors.
That does not automatically make the proposed transaction improper.
Additional spectrum could allow a network operator to increase capacity and improve service.
But spectrum concentration is a legitimate regulatory consideration.
The NCC's own rules require regulatory oversight of significant changes in ownership and control, and its current guidance says regulators review financial capability, compliance and outstanding obligations before approving such transactions.
That makes the proposed MTN-Mafab transaction a perfect opportunity for transparency.
Before approving it, regulators should publish enough information for Nigerians to understand what is being transferred and why.
The biggest unanswered question: what did Nigeria actually get?
This is where the investigation should ultimately land.
Nigeria received the licence fee.
That part is supported by multiple records.
But a spectrum auction is not merely a government revenue exercise.
The policy objective was to create digital infrastructure and competition.
The government therefore expected more than a cheque.
It expected:
5G infrastructure.
Coverage.
Competition.
Investment.
Jobs.
New digital services.
Better broadband capacity.
And eventually millions of Nigerians using the network.
Mafab's own 2022 plan envisioned thousands of sites and millions of subscribers.
The question is how much of that actually materialised.
The investigation journalists should now conduct
A serious investigation into Mafab should not begin with the conclusion that the $273.6 million payment was fake.
It should begin by reconstructing the entire transaction.
1. Establish the payment
Obtain the original NCC receipt and government accounting entry for Mafab's $273.6 million.
2. Trace the money
Identify every source account involved in financing the payment.
3. Identify the financiers
Publish the names of the shareholders, lenders, guarantors and investors who financed Mafab.
4. Audit the proposed $1.9 billion financing plan
Did Mafab actually raise the proposed $350 million equity?
Did it raise the $1.59 billion debt?
If not, how did its financing strategy change?
5. Establish the ownership timeline
Who owned Mafab before the auction, after the auction, after payment, during rollout and today?
6. Investigate the six employees
How could a six-employee company hold and operate such an asset?
Which functions were outsourced?
To whom?
At what cost?
7. Audit government support
Search NCC, USPF, CBN, budget and intervention records for every payment, loan, guarantee or subsidy involving Mafab.
8. Audit the rollout
How many sites did Mafab actually deploy?
Where are they?
How many were operational?
How many subscribers did the company have?
9. Examine NCC's enforcement
How many inspections did NCC conduct?
What did inspectors find?
What warnings or sanctions were issued?
Why were extensions granted?
10. Investigate the MTN transaction
Obtain the proposed transfer agreement, purchase price, valuation and liabilities.
11. Examine spectrum concentration
Determine how much spectrum MTN would control after the transaction and what that means for competition.
12. Establish what happens to the public-interest obligations
Does MTN inherit Mafab's rollout obligations?
If not, why not?
So, did Mafab really pay?
The available evidence says yes.
NCC says it received the $273.6 million.
NIPC confirmed the payment.
The licence was formally issued after payment.
The Federal Government subsequently reported hundreds of millions of dollars in 5G-related revenue.
And an early Mafab investor, Thomas Etuh, has publicly described how the money was raised.
That makes the claim that Mafab simply fabricated the $273.6 million payment unsupported by the evidence currently available.
But that should not end the investigation.
In fact, it should make the investigation more precise.
Because there are still serious questions about who financed Mafab, how the company was structured, why a company with only six recorded employees was allowed to pursue a $273.6 million national spectrum asset, why its rollout repeatedly struggled, what the NCC actually verified, whether it received any public financial support, how ownership changed, and why the company is now attempting to transfer its spectrum to MTN.
And there is one claim that requires particular caution:
There is currently no reliable evidence identified in this investigation showing that the CBN handed Mafab taxpayers' money as “critical infrastructure support.”
If such a payment occurred, the evidence should be discoverable.
The transaction would have a beneficiary, a programme, an approval, a bank trail and an accounting record.
Find those documents—or withdraw the allegation.
The same principle applies to the $273.6 million.
Don't ask Nigerians to believe Mafab paid.
Don't ask Nigerians to believe it didn't.
Show them the money trail.
Because the real Mafab story is no longer simply about whether a little-known company could win a $273.6 million spectrum licence.
It is about whether Nigeria's system for allocating scarce public spectrum produced the competition and infrastructure Nigerians were promised—or whether a valuable public asset is now simply moving from one private balance sheet to another.
That is the investigation worth doing.
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