by Thinus Ferreira
Nigeria's revenue service has told the West African country's banks to immediately freeze MultiChoice Africa and MultiChoice Nigeria's bank accounts in the country, demanding to be paid R63 million, and saying that MultiChoice Africa and its Nigerian subsidiary had refused access to their servers for auditing.
Reuters reports that Nigeria's revenue service ordered the banks to "recover 1.8 trillion naira ($4.4 billion, R63 billion)" according to Muhammad Nami, Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) executive chairman.
So far there been no statement from the MultiChoice Group, MultiChoice Africa, or MultiChoice Nigeria. (See the UPDATE below.)
According to FIRS, MultiChoice Africa and MultiChoice Nigeria "would not promptly respond to correspondences, they lacked data integrity and are not transparent as they continually deny FIRS access to their records",
"Particularly, MultiChoice Nigeria has avoided giving the FIRS accurate information on the number of its subscribers and income."
"It is further requested that the FIRS be informed of any transactions before execution on the account, especially transfers of funds to any of their subsidiaries," FIRS said.
"The companies are involved in the under-remittance of taxes which necessitated a critical review of the tax-compliance level of the company."
The Nigerian government and its various broadcasting regulatory bodies have been waging a years-long war on multiple fronts - including company raids - against the multi-national pay-TV company that is seen as "South African", with many other South African and multinational companies that have decided to pack it in and leave Nigeria over the past few years.
MultiChoice Africa attempts to turn around its Nigerian business that has been loss-making for years and dragged down its combined "Rest of Africa (RoA)" financial results outside of South Africa, have been hampered by draconian existing and proposed broadcasting legislation, the ongoing depreciation of the naira currency, Nigeria's stifling and deteriorating economic conditions, unreliable electricity supply, as well as growing political instability.
Currently, for instance, MultiChoice Nigeria can't communicate to its subscribers or potential customers on Twitter and did so last in June, following the dictatorial Nigerian government's sudden, unilateral "ban" on companies to use Twitter in the country.
Besides Nigeria's public dislike of M-Net West Africa productions like Big Brother Naija on ministerial level, the country has also dragged MultiChoice Nigeria to court over its subscriber operating and billing system.
The Nigerian government also wants to subject MultiChoice Nigeria to a system of having to "apply" and get government permission for subscription price increases as part of a system of forced price setting in what is supposedly a free market economy, and also wants to force MultiChoice to implement an impossible "pay-per-view" system that is wholly out of touch with reality.
In the past financial year MultiChoice saw a 9% growth in DStv and GOtv subscribers in Nigeria, with subscription revenue in the country growing by 20% to R6.8 billion.
UPDATE - Thursday 8 July 2021 15:00: MultiChoice is responding.
"MultiChoice Nigeria has not received any notification from Firs," says the MultiChoice Group in a statement.
"The matter is apparently based on unfounded allegations that MultiChoice Nigeria has not fully disclosed all existing subscribers to authorities."
"MultiChoice Nigeria respects and is comfortable that it complies with the tax laws of Nigeria. We have been and are currently in discussion with FIRS regarding their concerns and believe that we will be able to resolve the matter amicably."
"Our operations are continuing in Nigeria."
