How a data depletion complaint gets from your network to 622

You cannot take a data complaint straight to the regulator. When we checked the NCC's online complaint form on 29 September 2026, its first required question asked whether you had already contacted your service provider and were still unhappy. Two more required boxes followed, one for the date of that first complaint and one for a complaint ticket ID number. So before a data depletion complaint reaches the Nigerian Communications Commission, your network has to have heard it and handed you a reference.

It matters more this week, because the complaint figures are out. Leadership and BusinessDay reported on 28 September that mobile subscribers lodged 413,587 complaints with the four networks between January and June. Airtel took the biggest share, with 228,992 of them. MTN came second on 124,405. Glo logged 56,810, and Leadership puts T2, formerly 9mobile, at 3,885.

MTN leads on data, but look at the size of each network

Data depletion is a small share of that total. Customers filed 23,396 complaints about data running out faster than it should. MTN alone accounted for 12,212 of them, which Technext put at about 52% of the total. Airtel followed on 9,806. Glo had 1,373 and T2 reported five.

Size explains most of the MTN lead. Leadership puts MTN's subscriber base in July at 100.86 million, and Airtel's at 66.76 million. Set against those subscriber figures, Airtel customers actually log more depletion complaints per line than MTN customers do. What the MTN headline mostly measures is how many people use MTN.

For an Airtel customer, that means the smaller share in the headline is not a sign of fewer data problems per person. For a Glo customer, the count is far lower, but so is the number of lines. Either way, the numbers tell you how common the complaint is, not whether yours will succeed.

None of this proves that anybody's data is being stolen. A complaint count only tells you that a customer was unhappy enough to call. It does not tell you whether that customer was right about where the data went, or whether an app on the phone used it overnight.

Networks also report how many complaints they closed, and the industry-wide rate came to 98.38%. Airtel reported the best score among the big three, at 99.38%. Glo came close behind, and MTN's rate was the lowest of the three, at 96.57%. T2 trailed everyone. Nobody in these reports says what counted as resolved, so a closed ticket may or may not mean a customer got data back.

Your data depletion complaint starts with the network

NCC's written procedure has two steps. First, you complain to your network, either on its customer care line or in person at one of its care centres. Only when that fails do you go to the Commission. A 2019 NCC press release said the same thing, quoting Aliyu Ibrahim, then its Head of Consumer Protection and Advocacy. He called the networks "the first level of reporting" for service problems. The same release described 622 as "a second level of complaint", which is the plain way to think about it.

Check your balance before you ring anyone. Do it again an hour later if the data seems to be dropping while your phone sits untouched on the table. MTN answers on *323*4#, and the other three networks use *323#, according to the list of data balance codes for every network. Screenshot the reply the moment it appears, before the message disappears from the screen.

Then call your network or walk into its care centre. When the care agent logs your case, ask for the ticket number and write down the date. You will need both. That is partly because the NCC form will not move past those boxes without them. If the agent says there is no ticket, ask again before you end the call.

If the network closes the case and you still think the data vanished, you can take it to the NCC. You can call 622, the NCC's toll-free contact centre, or fill in the complaint form on consumer.ncc.gov.ng. You can also message the Commission on Facebook, X or Instagram. The Commission also runs five zonal offices, from Lagos and Ibadan to Kano. The procedure page lists an address and phone number for each one. Letters go to the Executive Vice Chairman at Plot 423 Aguiyi Ironsi Street, Maitama, Abuja, marked for the attention of the Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau.

According to the Leadership report, the Quality of Service Business Rules and the Consumer Code of Practice Regulations, both issued in 2024, govern these complaints. Neither the NCC procedure page nor its form gives a deadline for a reply. If a care agent quotes you a fixed number of days, ask where it is written.

Write these down before you call anyone

Telling a care agent that your data finished gives them nothing to check. Times, amounts and screenshots do. Collect them the same day, while the times are fresh. Keep them together in one folder on your phone, because a care agent on 622 or at a zonal office will ask for the same things the network did:

1. A screenshot of the balance reply before the drop, and another after it, with the time visible.
2. The plan name, what you paid and the day you bought it.
3. Any SMS from the network confirming the purchase or warning you about usage.
4. The ticket number and the date of your first complaint.
5. Your phone's own data-usage screen for the same days, especially if it shows far less than the network took.

One quirk on the form trips people up. Its "Type of Complaint" menu had no option called data depletion when we went through it. Pick "Billing" or "Quality of Service (Data)". A sub-category box and a free-text description come after that, and the description is where your case gets made. Write down the plan, the balance before, the balance after and the hours in between, in plain words.

If your problem is a bundle you paid for that never arrived, the menu has a separate "Recharge/Top-Up Issues" option. That is a different complaint from data that arrived and then drained too fast. Choose the one that matches what happened, so your description and your category tell the same story.

The rest of the form is short. You pick your network from a menu, give the mobile number the data sat on, then add your name, city, state and email address. T2 customers should look for the old name, because the menu still listed the network as "9mobile Nigeria" when we checked. The same menu covers home internet providers such as Spectranet and ipNX, so a router complaint follows the same route.

People also ask whether the NCC will get their data refunded. The form asks what you want the Commission to do and gives three answers: investigate and resolve the issue, provide information, or educate on consumer rights. None of the NCC pages we read promises a refund of lost data or sets a formula for one. Choose "investigate and resolve" and attach the screenshots from your folder.

Sometimes the leak is on your phone

MTN has its own explanation. Technext reports the network blaming high-definition streaming and videos that play by themselves on social feeds, plus updates and cloud backups running in the background. That is the network's side of the argument, and a convenient one. On plenty of phones it is also true. If backups run overnight on mobile data, you may wake up to a smaller balance.

Two checks take five minutes. Open your phone's data-usage screen and see which app ate the most this week, because a single video app can quietly outspend everything else you do. Then switch off auto-updates on mobile data, and stop videos playing on their own in your social apps. The step-by-step settings for Android and iPhone are in a separate guide on why data finishes fast. If those checks come back clean and the balance still drops while mobile data is switched off, you have the kind of case worth taking to your network. Write down the time you switched data off and the balance at that moment, then check again later. A drop with data off is much harder for a care agent to explain away as streaming or backups.

Expiry fools people as well. Under an NCC direction from April 2018, unused data rolls over only if you renew within a set window. A daily plan gives you one day. Monthly plans give you a week. Anything in between gets three days, and special plans don't roll over at all because, in the NCC's words, they "attract extra value". Miss the window and the leftover data is gone. It feels like theft, but it is within the rules.

Buying through an app like AidaPay changes nothing here. The bundle sits on your line like any other, so the complaint still goes to MTN, Airtel, Glo or T2. After that it goes to the NCC, not to whoever sold you the data.

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Published 29 September 2026. Prices and codes change - if you spot one that has moved, tell us and we will fix it.