MTN's CEO says confident Nigeria dispute will be resolved

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DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - South African telecoms firm MTN Group is confident a multibillion-dollar dispute with the Nigerian government will be resolved, Chief Executive Rob Shuter said on Monday.

Nigeria's central bank last month ordered MTN's Lagos-based unit to hand over $8.1 billion that it said was illegally sent abroad, and the government earlier this month handed MTN with a separate $2 billion tax bill.

Nigerian politics are seen by some analysts as a factor in the pressure on MTN. President Muhammadu Buhari, who swept to power in 2015 on promises to fight corruption and push through tougher regulation, is seeking re-election in next year's polls.

"Nigeria, it's our largest market. We've been operating there since 2001," Shuter told reporters at the ITU Telecom World conference in Durban.

"We do have some challenges these past few weeks, but we believe we will be able to make our case and I'm sure we will move past that as soon as we can."

Shuter, who has led MTN since last year, said that regulatory environments elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East were largely aligned with what MTN wanted to achieve.

MTN, which has expanded in more than 20 frontier markets including war-ravaged Syria and Afghanistan, denies wrongdoing in Nigeria.

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by James Macharia)