At last, the Federal Government has sold the Nigeria Telecommunication, NITEL Plc and its sister company, Nigeria Mobile Telecommunications, Mtel for $252 million to NATCOM Consortium.
The company, yesterday emerged preferred bidder for the two firms with an offer of $252,251,000.
It had earlier offered to acquire the entities for $221million, which Chairman of the Technical Committee of the National Council on Privatisation, NPC, Mr. Peterside Atedo, said the amount was far below the reserved price.
NATCOM eventually won the bid when it offered $252.25million as the chairman announced that, “I am happy to announce that the resize bid has met the reserved price.”
Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, described the event as historic. She said it was the last phase in the reform of the country’s telecommunications sector.
“The privatisation of government-owned telecommunication companies is the last segment in the well thought-out reform of the sector, which commenced since 2000.”
Johnson continued: “Government will continue to review and fine-tune policies that will provide an enabling environment for the growth and development of private sector-driven Nigeria telecommunications industry.”
Atedo, who was represented by NCP Technical Committee Vice Chairman, Alhaji Haruna Sambo, said that, “Unfortunately, of the two pre-qualified bidders, NETTAG Consortium was disqualified for failure to enclose a $10million bid bond as clearly stipulated in the Request For Proposals, RFP.
“Each bidder shall furnish, as part of its proposal a bid bond in the form of a bank guarantee or a letter of credit in the sum of $10million,” he said.
Atedo insisted that following the disqualification of NETTAG Consortium as a result of its failure to submit a bid bond with its technical proposal, only the financial bid of NATCOM Consortium qualified for opening, having scored an average of 92 percent in its technical proposal which was above the minimum pass mark of 75 percent, and satisfied the requirement of a valid bid bond.
Atedo maintained that as stipulated in the RFP, 30 percent of bid price is to be made within 15 days of notification and the balance will be paid within 90 days.
He said that the previous unsuccessful privatisation transactions of NITEL included the strategic core investor sale of 51 percent shareholding to Investors International London Limited, IILL in 2001.
Others included the failed management contract by Pentascope in 2005; and the aborted Orascom Telecoms bid in 2005, the strategic core investor sale through negotiated sale strategy, to Transcorp Plc cancelled in 2009 and the strategic core investor sale in 2011, where New Generation Communications Limited and Omen International emerged as preferred and reserved bidders, respectively.
Chairman of NATCOM Limited, Mr. Olatunde Ayeni, who is also the chairman of Skye Bank, said he was excited to be at the top of a very tedious process and pledged to transform NITEL.
“NITEL is a national asset and it has been wasting away. This process that the government has adopted is the best. There are so many assets locked up in NITEL that is wasting. We will find the money that is required for the investment,” Ayeni said.
In his remark, the Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah, who was represented by Engr. Itanyin Ogechukwu, said the exercise rekindled hope for the telecommunication industry.
In the last 13 years, there had been several attempts to sell NITEL. Most of them were marred by insincerity of purpose and manipulation of the process by government officials and private sector operators.
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