MTN Nigeria has recovered N32 billion from Nigerian banks as part of the N74 billion outstanding debt owed to the telecom operator for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) service charges.

However, N42 billion remains unpaid, highlighting the lingering tensions in the protracted dispute between banks and telecom companies.

USSD, otherwise quick codes or “feature codes s a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol that is used to send text messages.

According to MTN Nigeria’s Q5 financial statement, the circular specified that: “The directive from CBN and NCC requires sixty percent (60%) of all pre-API invoices to be paid as full and final settlement by 2 July 2025 while for post-API invoices the DMBs are required to pay 85 percent (85%) of outstanding invoices issued after the February 2022 implementation of APIs by 31 December 2024. In addition, future invoices are to be settled within one month of issuance.

Based on this directive, on 31 December 2024 MTN received N32 billion payment from the banks out of the N74 billion in CBN and NCC circulars to banks,” they stated.

Recall that telecommunications companies had threatened to withdraw their services over the N250 billion accumulated debt by banks.

In December 2024, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) issued a joint circular to resolve the long-standing USSD debt impasse between banks and mobile network operators (MNOs).

Microsoft has confirmed that Skype will shut down on May 20, 2025, with the free version of Microsoft Teams for consumers as the designated successor.

The company said, “Skype users will be in control, they’ll have the choice. They can migrate their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want, or they can migrate to Teams.”

However, telephony features are being discontinued.

Skype, the once one of the go-to messaging platforms is being shut down after 21 years.

The video calling service that was

Introduced in 2003, Skype was then acquired by Microsoft in 2011.

It was used as a replacement for early communications apps like Windows Live Messenger, but the history of the Skype platform within Microsoft products has been bumpy.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now since Microsoft has put most of its efforts over the last decade into its Teams platform.

Skype has also become less relevant over the years as platforms like Google Chat, WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook’s Messenger, Zoom and Apple’s FaceTime have taken over the mobile video calling space.

The Trump administration has ceased funding for roughly 5,800 global health programs, including those that support providing vaccines, life-saving medications, and emergency health care to millions of people around the world.

Donald Trump

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department began sending out a wave of emails informing thousands of health groups, refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, and polio vaccination projects that they would no longer receive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), per the New York Times.

The funding was distributed to a wide range of programs, including those for HIV treatment, malaria prevention in Africa, and maternal health care in Nepal.

More major projects now canceled due to the funding cut include: a $90 million malaria prevention contract, a project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that provided water for 250,000 displaced people living in conflict zones, HIV care and treatment in Lesotho, Tanzania, and Eswatini run by Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, a $34 million medical supply management contract in Kenya, 87 shelters in South Africa that support thousands of women who have survived rape and domestic violence, a Yemen community health program in Yemen that identified malnourished children, and a severe acute malnutrition treatment project in Nigeria that serves millions of children and women.

“People will die, but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut,” Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, said in a statement.