{"id":626,"date":"2017-02-23T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T16:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metronewsng.online\/2017\/02\/protesters-attack-mtn-office-in-abuja.html\/"},"modified":"2017-02-23T16:53:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T16:53:00","slug":"protesters-attack-mtn-office-in-abuja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/protesters-attack-mtn-office-in-abuja\/","title":{"rendered":"Protesters attack MTN office in Abuja"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angry protesters broke into the MTN  office located at 4 Madiera street, off Shehu Shagari way, Maitama, Abuja, on Thursday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some members of staff of the organisation and customers were said to have been attacked, while valuables were stolen.<\/p>\n

A
\n witness, who simply identified himself as Oscar, told journalists that,
\n but for the intervention of policemen, the protesters would have
\ndestroyed the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe protest was about the xenophobia that
\n is happening in South Africa. The protesters were not happy about the
\nway South Africans have been maltreating Nigerians,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey
\n wanted to pull down the office, but security operatives prevented them.
\n One of them even suggested that they should go to the embassy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\"AngryNigerian\"<\/p>\n
\nOscar speaking with journalists<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nActivities have been suspended in the office, while policemen have taken over the area.<\/p>\n

MTN head office in South Africa has issued a statement on the incident, according to Reuters<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The attack happened hours after Pascal Dozie, chairman of MTN Nigeria, led a delegation of the company<\/strong><\/a> to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo at the presidential villa in Abuja.<\/p>\n

\n\"MTNOfficeAbuja1\"<\/p>\n
\nA police van in front of the office<\/em><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Phutuma
\n Nhleko, MTN Group chairman, South Africa; Ferdinand Moolman, CEO of MTN
\n Nigeria; and Gbenga Oyebode, a lawyer of the company, were in the
\ndelegation.<\/p>\n

The identity of the protesters has not been revealed,
\nbut on Wednesday, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS)
\nannounced that it will be holding a nationwide protest to draw global
\nattention to the attacks on Nigerians in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Kadiri Aruna, president of the association, had described the xenophobic attacks as sad and unfortunate.<\/p>\n

The Nigerian community in South Africa has recorded two attacks in the last one week.<\/p>\n

At
\n least five houses and businesses belonging to Nigerians were burnt by a
\n mob on Saturday, while 15 houses, either belonging or rented by
\nimmigrants, especially Nigerians, were been burnt by angry residents in
\nRosettenvile, south of Johannesburg, last week Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angry protesters broke into the MTN  office located at 4 Madiera street, off Shehu Shagari way, Maitama, Abuja, on Thursday. Some members of staff of the organisation and customers were said to have been attacked, while valuables were stolen. A witness, who simply identified himself as Oscar, told journalists that, but for the intervention of policemen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-default"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}