The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has responded to allegations that it undervalued the assets of the moribund former national telecoms company NITEL and its mobile subsidiary MTEL to NATCOMS Consortium for US$256 million.
Benjamin Dikki, Director General of BPE described the notion as mischievous.
He said: “In 2001, a fully operational NITEL, with its mobile arm, Mtel-with everything functional was sold for $1.1 billion-I want you to compared carefully; In 2005, when NITEL had undergone some level of dilapidation because since ILL could not pay, government was not making additional investment in NITEL-it deteriorated and in 2005, in a competitive bidding process, Orascom that is an international telecom operator bought NITEL for $256 million.
“Government told Orascom to increase its bid, they refused and walked away and said if you don’t sell NITEL to us at $256 million which is the value we think NITEL is worth as at that time-and the mobile networks were working, the landlines were working and the international gsm were all working-$256 million in 2005.
“Then Transcorp took over and could not inject the necessary capital. And by the last five years, NITEL had completely shut down. There’s no single infrastructure of NITEL today that is functional. And then we succeeded in selling this company for $256 million in 2015 and nobody is giving us national honours for achieving this feat – I am worried.”
According to him, BPE should be receiving accolades for being able to market NITEL and get people to be interested to pay $256 million for a dead company that is not operational.
“If you ask me, I think Nigerians have gotten the best deal they can from this transaction,” he said.
Who told this guy that Nitel is dead? It is like saying that because Micheal Jackson is dead his estate should stop receiving royalties. That dead company has first right to almost any thing public infrastructure in this country, land acquired, contractual agreements etc that is still yielding cheddar year in year out.
I also think NITEL is dead and gone….. Its in the news that its been sold to new owners by the BPE.