NATCOM Consortium, a consortium run by Skye Bank’s chairman, Olatunde Ayeni, the founder of Sahara Energy, Tonye Cole, and two other companies has emerged as the winning bidder for the assets of Nitel and Mtel. The Consortium on Wednesday in Abuja emerged the preferred bidder for the acquisition of the Nigerian Telecommunications Plc (NITEL) and Nigerian Mobile Telecommunication (MTEL), the waning telecommunication outfits of the Nigerian government.
This was disclosed during the public opening of the financial bid for the acquisition of the two companies by the Chairman, Technical Committee of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), Atedo Peterside.
Expressions of interest were received from 17 organisations and consortiums by the June 30 deadline and only two of them – NATCOM Consortium and NETTAG Consortium met the criteria for pre-qualification.
According to Nigeria communicationsweek.com.ng the federal government had initially rejected a $221 million bid from NATCOM before the company increased its bid to $252 million.
NATCOM Consortium has as members – NATSPACE Telecommunication Investment Limited, PCCW Global Limited, Prime Union Investment Limited, Olutoyi Estate Development & Services Limited, Legal Resources Alliance & Co., Sahara Energy Resources Limited, and LM Ericsson Nigeria Limited.
According to Peterside, the NCP approved the privatisation of the two companies in February 2012 through guided liquidation after a review of previous unsuccessful attempts.
NETTAG Consortium was disqualified for failure to enclose a bid bond as stated in the Request for Proposal (RFP), he added
“Section 10.3.1 of the RFP requires that each bidder shall furnish, as part of its proposal, a bid bond in the form of a Bank Guarantee or a Letter of Credit in the sum of 10 million dollars. Section 10.3.2 of the RFP further specifies that any technical proposal not accompanied by the bid bond will be disqualified.
“Therefore, following the disqualification of NETTAG Consortium as a result of its failure to submit a bid together with its technical proposal, only the financial bid of NATCOM Consortium qualified for opening today,” Peterside said.
The process of privatising the national telecom groups dates back to the year 2000, as part of the government’s reform of the telecommunications sector.
However, after four attempts and a management contract aimed at repositioning the firms ended without success, the government tried to sell 51 percent equity to Investors International London Limited (IILL) as the strategic core investor in 2001.
Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications Technology said the privatization of the government-owned telecoms companies was the last segment in the reform process which commenced in the year 2000.
According to the Minister, liberalisation of the sector in the last 13 years has attracted new investments valued at over $32 billion entirely from the private sector, resulting in over 130 million subscribers today.
The Federal Government would continue to fine tune policies to provide an enabling environment for the growth and development of a private sector-driven telecommunications sector, she added.
In nominal terms, the Information and Communication sector grew by 17.66 per cent (year-on-year) in the Third Quarter of 2014, up by 5.68 percentage points from Third Quarter of 2013 and 6.55 percentage points from the Q2 2014.
“Telecommunications was the major driver of growth in the sector, growing by 6.25 per cent. Quarter-on-quarter, the sector slowed by 11.81 per cent,” according to NBS data for Q3.
Internet usage has expanded, from 0.1 per cent penetration of the population in 2000 to about 30 per cent in 2014 (approximately 68 million users).
Over the past decade, Nigerian telecoms operators have invested a cumulative $25bn in deploying their networks however, there are indications that the Nigerian telecoms market still operates below its real potential.
DAN OJABO
