Reps kick against sale of NITEL

THE House of Representatives on Wednesday kicked against the privatisation of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), saying that the previous privatisation exercise of the Federal Government was nothing to write home about. A member of the House, Honourable Chris Azubogu had, through a motion entitled "Need to privatise Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) separately,” asked the House to support the motion, but members took turn to condemn it, claiming that the motion was anti-people. While leading the debate on the motion before it was killed, the lawmaker had implored the House to mandate its committee on communications to investigate the mode of unbundling and make recommendations to the House within four weeks. He added that it was unfortunate that efforts by the Federal Government to privatise NITEL and Mobile Telecommunications Limited (MTEL) since 2001 with the liberalisation of the telecommunication industry had failed to yield meaningful result. Going down memory lane on government's effort to privatise the company, the lawmaker said "the first attempt was in 2002 when Investors International London Limited (IILL) offered $1.137 billion to acquire Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), but defaulted in paying the bid price and therefore lost the opportunity. ""Further aware that when the first attempt failed, Bureau of Public Enterprises, under the leadership of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, took formal steps to outsource management of NITEL by engaging Pentascope of The Netherlands to manage the pioneer telecommunications company with the expectation of the Dutch firm to expand NITEL in 2003 by creating more landlines and providing at least allegedly 500,000 lines for the mobile arm but that never happened," he said. Speaking further, Azobogu said that the cancellation of the $500 million acquisition by Transcorp or the acquisition of 51 per cent equity of NITEL in 2006 as well as the unsuccessful $2.5 billion acquisition of 75 per cent equity process initiated by New Generation Telecommunication Consortium of China, which was cancelled, following the group's inability to pay the bid price. To this end, he said the "delay in the sale of NITEL and Mtel has led to monumental loss of funds and job opportunities to Nigerians and has prevented additional investments in the telecommunications sector." He stressed that "it is becoming unrealistic to expect a fair market value for the full price of NITEL\Mtel, especially as investment conditions in Nigeria and around the world are yet to improve since the capital and financial market crisis of 2008\2009 and 2010.” Supporting the motion, Adams Jangaba and Ndudi Elumelu called on the House to move in the direction of fast-tracking the sale of the telecommunications company, but Honourables Kamil Akinlabi, Haruna Kigbu and Ayo Omidiran, kicked against the motion, saying NITEL should not be privatised. Specifically, Akinlabi said that several attempts had been made to privatise NITEL/MTEL but it seemed the spirits of Nigerians were against the sale, claiming it would create a lot of security implications. When the motion was put to vote by the Deputy Speaker, Honourable Emeka Ihedioha who presided over the session, majority of the lawmakers voted against