 The association of licensed telecommunication operators of Nigeria says the accumulated debt from the structured supplementary service data, all to them by banks, rose to 80 billionaires of November this year. The chairman of Akan Gbinga, the buyer made this known in a recent interview. He said at the time, we will come when telecommunication companies will be forced to withdraw from U.S.S.D. services, as banks refuse to pay. Recorded in 2019, telecommunications companies said they could no longer provide the services for free and propose to take a cut of 4.50 Nare per 20 seconds from the charges paid by customers to the banks. However, the banks geeked against it, alleging that a bill raised costs by 450%. Earlier on our break first show, the break first wave spoke to President Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria, engineer Ike Inamani. I think the general public know that if something is not done and the payments are not made by the banks, unfortunately, the telecom settle may not be able to provide this service anymore. And the reason we are making this known to the general public is at the end of the day. It is the subscribers that may suffer from it. The reason being that this is not an issue that just came up, it's been on for many years now. In 2019, there was, when the debt was still about 32 billion, there was agreement rich in terms of how the banks were to pay it. They ignored that agreement, did it on or it? In 2021, by this time, the debt has risen to about 42 billion. Another agreement was rich that evolved the CBM, the telecom regulator NCC, and the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy. At that point, we all felt a final arrangement has been reached that will ensure these debts are paid. Unfortunately, the banks again have totally ignored the agreement and refused to honor it. And the consequence of that is that the debt has now risen to about 80 billion. And our consign is that with the trend and the way the banks are approaching the issue, there is clearly no means or willingness for them to pay. And unfortunately, it was simply little inability of the telcos to be able to offer the service. Now, two things is important here. The banks already have the money because they've already debited the customers, you know, account for this money. So the money is sitting with the bank. We're not asking for something that the banks not already have with them, right? The second one is that there's an agreement that this payment should be made. And for some reason, the bank just refused to make the payment. So it's good to put this in perspective. It's not like we are threatening the industry or the country. We're simply making it known that, unfortunately, we are running out of the resource to continue providing the service that is meant to be paid for, which for some reason the banks have simply refused to pay.