Wednesday, July 18, 2012

FG raised N100b from NITEL – BPE

ABUJA — The Federal Government has realised
over N101 billion from the Nigeria
Telecommunication Limited, NITEL, which has been
in coma for a long time.
This was disclosed, Tuesday, by Bolanle
Onagoruwa, Director General of Bureau of Public
Enterprises, BPE, at the opening of a two-day
investigative hearing on the activities of Mtel/
NITEL's management board, status of its
investment as well as revenue generation from
ongoing services rendered to other
telecommunication companies in Nigeria held by
the House Joint Committee on privatisation,
finance, communications, public procurement and
information technology.
The BPE boss noted that National Council on
Privatisation, NCP, is favourably disposed to
adopting "guided liquidation" against the injection
of $1 billion for the re-activation of the two
telecoms companies as alternatives.
In her presentation, Onagoruwa argued that the
debt profile of the public parastatal stood at N354
billion. But IIlyasu-Sa'ab put the total debt profile
at N182 billion of which NITEL owed N79 billion
while Mtel owed N103 billion.
She disclosed that $3,668,561.70 was generated
from Sat-3 submarine cable, $2,855,091.81
remitted in the domiciliary account, $521,990
generated from British Telecoms, $290,230 from
cable and wireless services while $1,249.84 was
realised from interest.
According to her, the companies liabilities include
N65,227,595,681 on equipment vendors;
N81,711,196,994 on bank claims;
N183,403,439,256 for government agencies and
N24,504,836,126 for others.
She added that Federal Government raised
N68,248,884,000 through Debt Management
Office, DMO, to offset outstanding salaries totalling
N54.2 billion, leaving a debt profile at
N122,448,884,000 with Assets Management
Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON.
While reacting, Khadijat Ibrahim, chairperson of the
committee and her colleagues in the joint
committee queried BPE over the N172 billion
differential in the debt profile compiled by both
parties.
Ibrahim who expressed concern over the BPE's
unsuccessful privatisation exercise regarding
several publicly-owned parastatals and their
eventual collapse or poor state said: "I see no
reason why the Federal Government cannot put
money into NITEL and Mtel and resuscitate them."
In their presentations, the Senior Staff Association
of Transport and Communication (SSASTAC) vowed
to resuscitate the companies if handed over to
workers.
On his part, Ibrahim Nakande, former minister of
state for communication who flayed the handing
over of NITEL/Mtel to Transcorp noted that the best
option was to hand it over to Orascom.
Also speaking, Abubakar Nahuche, former
Managing Director of NITEL under Transcorp
maintained that Transcorp lacked the financial
capacity to run the two telecoms companies and
technical capacity.

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