The National Council on Privatisation on Monday okayed two firms for the guided liquidation of the Nigeria Telecommunication Limited and its mobile arm, M-Tel.

The two firms, NATCOM Consortium and NETAD Consortium, were picked from the 17 firms shortlisted for the liquidation during the third meeting of the council for the year presided over by Vice-President Namadi Sambo at the Presidential Abuja.

The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Musa Sada; Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen; and Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Benjamin Dikki, briefed State House correspondents of the meeting’s outcome.

Sada said the two firms led others shortlisted with 90.7 and 90.2 percentage scores, respectively.

Assets up for bid in NITEL include the licences and the spectrum, nationwide fixed wired networks, national right of way duct system, ibre optic transmission backbone, and the CDMA network system.

Others are international gateway earth stations, microwave transmission equipment/network and towers, and other core assets.

The assets up for sale in M-Tel are the licences and the spectrum, national right of way;GSM network, including mobile switching centres, base station controllers, base transceiver stations and the general packet radio services. Others are the analogue system and other core assets.

Sada said the government was working hard to ensure that the two firms bounced back better.

He said, “The criteria is being followed and out of these 17 firms shortlisted, two are qualified for request for proposal issuance. And this is what the council deliberated today and approved the qualifications of the two companies.

“The two companies are NATCOM Consortium and NETAD Consortium, and they came top with 90.7 and 90.2 per cent, respectively.

“You will agree with me that efforts at getting NITEL back on stream have been very strenuous, because of so many issues, so many problems; but this time around, there have been strong efforts so that we do not go back to what we had before.

“With what has been put in place, we are very confident that we will only move forward to take us to the appropriate destination.

“The idea here is for us to have a working institution not necessarily a situation where these assets are just dispensed with for whatever reasons.

The minister added, “From our discussions today, we are making sure that these assets do not go to somebody who for other considerations will want to own and keep them.

“Our target is to make sure that NITEL/M-Tel comes back. It has very robust assets and it will be a very good thing for the country. Mobile telephones and networks are not substitutes for land lines, and that is why we are doing everything to be able to bring it back to work.”

Onolememen told journalists that the council also approved a five-year extension for the concessionaire of the new Warri Port, Associated Maritime Services Limited.

The minister said the extension was granted since there was no objection from the Minister of Transport and the Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority.

He added that the council also relinquished its 51 per cent holding shares in the Stallion Property Development Company for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Pension Limited.

The decision was taken to bridge the pension gap observed in the NNPCPL.

Sada added that the council also received the report of a committee that visited the Ajaokuta Steel Company of Nigeria based on the allegation of asset stripping that was reported to the council at the last meeting.

He said no decision had been taken on the report, adding that a statement would be issued after the report must have been considered by the council.


http://www.punchng.com/business/business-economy/fg-okays-two-firms-for-nitel-m-tel-liquidation/

Dem wan start again abi........another round of bidding process that eventually leads us back to square one.

FG should just dash one foreign telecoms operator this collossal waste (NITEL) and come to a mutual agreement with them whereby the would-have-been potential value of NITEL would be used to crash down call & data rates.