FCCPC's Own Airtime-Lender Register Grew From Three Names to Nine While a Federal High Court Order Restrained the Regulations Behind It

The Commission maintains a public page headed Approvals of Airtime/Data Lenders under its digital money lender registration section. We retrieved it on 23 September 2026. It lists nine companies: Total Tim Nigeria Limited, Rane Interactive Medien CLS Limited, Mode NG Applications Nigeria Limited, Cloud Interactive Associate Limited, Coverage Broadband Limited, ERL Telecoms Service Limited, MRS Innovation Nigeria Limited, Fonyou Technologies Nigeria Limited and Technotrends Platforms Nigeria Limited. The table carries no approval dates, no reference numbers and no scope of authorisation. The remark column is blank or a dash for every entry.

We then retrieved five archived captures of the same page and read each one. On 5 March 2026 it listed three companies. On 8 April 2026 it still listed three. On 10 May 2026 it listed all nine, in the composition it holds today. The 18 June 2026 and 29 August 2026 captures list the same nine. Six names were therefore added to the Commission's register at some point in the 32 days between 8 April and 10 May 2026.

The dates matter because of what sits inside that window. On 15 April 2026 Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal High Court in Lagos granted an interim order in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/760/2026, brought by the Wireless Application Service Providers Association of Nigeria, restraining the Commission from enforcing or implementing the DEON Consumer Lending Regulations 2025 against the association's members. The Commission applied to vacate that order on 28 April and the court declined. Twenty five of the 32 days in which six names appeared on the register fall after 15 April. We cannot place the additions more precisely than that window, because no capture exists between those two dates.

On 22 May 2026 the Commission announced publicly that it was suspending implementation and enforcement of the DEON Regulations in compliance with the court's order. By that date its own register already carried all nine names. Four days earlier, on 18 May, committal proceedings had been filed against the Commission's Executive Vice Chairman over the order. No court has found contempt, and the filing of committal proceedings establishes nothing about whether any occurred.

On 20 July 2026 Justice Lewis-Allagoa dismissed the association's originating summons in its entirety, declined all reliefs sought, upheld the DEON Regulations as within the Commission's powers, and discharged the interim order. The Commission published a statement the same day, which we retrieved and read. It says that upon being served with the court's interim order in April 2026, the Commission immediately suspended implementation and enforcement of the Regulations in full compliance with the court's directive. Its Director of Corporate Affairs is quoted to the same effect. That account and the register's own growth in April and early May are not reconciled anywhere on the Commission's site.

There is a second gap, between the register and the way the sequence was reported. Nigerian outlets reported on 6 June 2026 that the Commission had just expanded the list from five to nine by adding ERL Telecoms, MRS Innovation, Fonyou and Technotrends, and that five companies had been approved on 22 April 2026. The archived register shows those four names already published by 10 May 2026, at least 27 days earlier. No capture we hold shows five entries at any point. The captures are samples rather than a continuous log, so the register may have passed through five between 8 April and 10 May without being recorded.

The Commission's page calls these entries approvals, not licences. That distinction is now load bearing. In the same 20 July judgment the court held that the Commission has no statutory authority to issue telecommunications licences and that nothing in the DEON Regulations creates a telecommunications licensing regime. The association filed a notice of appeal on 21 July 2026 and sought to restrain implementation pending appeal. The nine names remain published as of 23 September 2026.

What this rests on

Six row counts of one government page taken on six different dates, and the Commission's own published account of when it stopped implementing the rules behind that page. The register history is grade (A) because we retrieved and read the live page and all five captures ourselves and counted the rows in each. The court dates, the order, the committal filing and the judgment holdings are documented and attributed but we do not hold the court file.

What this does not establish

That any of the six additions occurred after 15 April rather than in the preceding week. That any approval was unlawful: the court upheld the Regulations and discharged the interim order. That the Commission breached the order, or that any contempt occurred. That any of the nine named companies did anything improper; they appear here only as entries on a public register. That the Commission's statement was knowingly inaccurate. The appeal filed on 21 July 2026 is pending, so the judgment is not final.