The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) confirmed there was only one qualified bidder for the country’s 2.6GHz spectrum auction, reported to be market leader MTN.

The auction will no longer take place and the sole bidder will pay $96 million for the spectrum it was seeking.

Leadership said the bidder is MTN Nigeria, which made a bid “to support its broadband programme,” although a company official told the newspaper he was not aware of this development because it had not heard from NCC.

The regulator said the qualified bidder expressed an interest to bid for six of the 14 lots on offer, at a reserve price of $16 million per slot, and paid the bid deposit as specified by the information memorandum.

There is now no need to hold an auction as the memorandum states that “if the aggregate demand from approved bidders is less than, or equal to the number of lots on offer, the commission will provisionally award the license to the party/parties at the reserve price.”

The NCC is now undertaking a due diligence exercise and will issue a licence for the cumulative 30MHz in the 2.6GHz frequency, it said in a statement.

In December, it was reported that Nigeria’s four biggest operators – MTN, Airtel, Etisalat and Globacom – will commercially roll-out 4G LTE networks by 2017.

A month prior to that MTN’s operating licence for the country’s 900MHz and 1.8GHz frequency bands was extended from February 2016 to August 2021 for a fee of $94 million.

In addition to its digital mobile licence, MTN holds a unified access licence and a 3G spectrum licence.

Earlier this week, discussions between Nigeria and MTN regarding a $3.9 billion were suspended until a House of Representatives committee concludes its investigation.