New Owners Inject $1bn in NITEL to Revive Telecoms Firm

About $1 billion has already been expended on the revival of Nigerian Telecommunication Limited (NITEL) and its sister company, Mobile Telecommunication Limited (Mtel), which were recently acquired by NATCOM Development and Investment Limited from the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL).

The injected funds and other efforts would see the company engage 4,000 employees by March, as it sets to roll out its mobile lines, and 4G/LTE services for broadband users.
The Chairman of NATCOM, Mr. Olatunde Ayeni, revealed these  during a presentation before the House of Representatives Joint Committees on Communication and Privatisation, where he added that the firm’s services would be rolled out on Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt before expanding to other parts of the country.

He disclosed  that the initial financial bid  was increased to $252.251 million from $221 million when juxtaposed with the liquidator’s reserved price of $256 million.
NATCOM acquired assets and licences of NITEL and MTEL, percentage interest held in South-Atlantic 3 (SAT-3) consortium, and identifiable assets capable of generating viable business units.

“NATCOM’s full submission was duly made to NITEL/MTEL’s liquidator and Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprises on  November 7, 2014. NATCOM’s submission was accompanied by a bid bond in the amount of $10 million as stipulated in the liquidator’s RFP,” he said.
He disclosed that $10 million had been spent on SAT-3 system,  quarterly dues to the consortium, system expansion and upgrade since the acquisition, adding that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had assigned another set of microwave frequency ranges to NATCOM upon request for N176.8 million, computed on the basis of 800 bases station network in the first instance.

NATCOM was requested to pay an additional N6.6 billion to bridge the shortfall of the value of the Naira to the Dollar from N168 to N197, after the payment of the first installment of 30 per cent of the bid price within 14 days of approval by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and balance within the 90 days,  Ayeni said.