Reps okay NITEL, MTEL sale to NATCOM
y, adopted the report of its Committees on Telecommunications, Privatisation and Commercialisation which gave a clean bill of health to the processes that led to the liquidation and acquisition of the Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd (NITEL) and its mobile arm MTEL by NATCOM Consortium. The Committees, which were mandated by the plenary to investigate the transactions some months back, submitted its findings, on Thursday, after several public hearings and working through tons of memoranda.
It would be recalled that after four unsuccessful attempts between 2001 and 2011, the National Council on Privatisation, in February 2012, directed the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), to privatise the companies through a guided liquidations process. The NATCOM Consortium was one of the 17 companies that submitted Expressions of Interest (EOI) when the bid was advertised in June 2014. Following pre-qualification, NATCOM and NATTAG Consortium qualified for the next stage and were invited to submit a Technical and Financial bid for the companies’ assets. NATCOM accompanied its bid with the mandatory Bid Bond of $10 million as stipulated in the Liquidators Request for Proposal.
NATTAG’s failure to comply disqualified it. At a Public ceremony December 2014, where the financial and technical bids were made open, NATCOM, with a bid of $252.25 million, emerged as the winner of the bid. While many Telecommunications industry watchers praised the exercise and adjudged it a good deal for the Federal Government and the country, there were some pockets of protests from some market watchers who felt the transaction needed to be looked into. This apparently informed the decision of the House of Representatives to investigate the transaction. But the Committees in the report, which the House adopted, on Thursday, were unequivocal about their findings that the BPE enforced due process and transparency in the course of the transaction.
The report read to the House by Honorable Saheed Akinlade Fijabi, the Chairman of House Committee on Communications read in part: “That the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), in enforcing due process, transparency and adopting procedure in line with international best practice during the entire sale process should adopt and apply such procedure in future privatisation exercise.”
The House, through the adopted report, therefore, called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to meet “its obligations and Commitments to the Bureau of Public Enterprises and core investor (NATCOM) in line with the Presidential approval on licenses and spectrum for the effective take off of NITEL and MTEL.”
The Report went further to urge the Federal Government to encourage NATCOM Consortium; owners of NITEL and MTEL by creating an enabling environment that will make the two entities compete with other telecom companies.
“This, according to the report, is because NATCOM Consortium is an indigenous company with great potentials for creating employment opportunities, reducing the huge amount of capital plight that is currently being experienced in the telecoms sector and foster strategic competition that is capable of further reducing the cost of communications in Nigeria.”
The committees commended the tenacity of NATCOM in the face of daunting odds. In compliance with post-acquisition agreements in the sale document, NATCOM has therefore embarked on aggressive work of revamping NITEL and MTEL since the acquisition and the mobile arm with the trade name nTEL, which is billed for the market before the end of April, 2016. The government was thus urged to encourage NATCOM Consortium, owners of NITEL and MTEL by creating an enabling environment that will make the two entities compete favourably with other telecom companies.
