The Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its sister counterpart, the Mobile Telecomunication (MTEL), requires not less than a whopping $1billion to fully come on stream.
This revelation came to the fore Tuesday in Abuja, when the new owner of the telecommunication outfits, NATCOM Consortium, formally received NITEL assets.
For NITEL, the assets that were handed over include: certificate of operation, international gateway lines and national carrier, as well as, share certificates, while the MTEL assets handed over included for Nigerian Mobile a digital mobile licence and spectrum.
Chairman of the consortium, Dr Olatunde Ayeni, speaking at the event said, “Within months, we would launch our new brand because work is progressively going on as I am speaking to you. If you look at the process that had been followed, it is very unlikely that we would retain the name ‘NITEL’.
Noting that NITEL take-off would not be a tea party because of the already saturated telecoms market, which operates with the state-of-the-art technology, the NATCOM chairman said.
‘‘I can assure you, technology had moved further from where it used to be. But we would bring to you the latest technology that you could find anywhere in the world.”
In his remarks, the Vice President, Architect Mohammed Namadi Sambo, recalled the tortuous road to privatising NITEL and noted that without the unparalleled support and commitment of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to the roadmap for the provision of robust telecommunications services to drive the economic transformation of Nigeria, the handover would not had been possible.
“This handover is a culmination of years of painstaking efforts by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and its secretariat, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the liquidator, the Federal Ministry of Communications Technology and other key stakeholders to increase competition in Nigeria’s Telecommunications industry,” Sambo, who was represented by Engineer Emmanuel Amadi, said.
Source: Nigerian Tribune
