The House of Representatives yesterday adopted the report of its Committees on Telecommunications and Privatisation and Commercialisation, which gave a clean bill of the health to the processes leading to the liquidation and acquisition of the Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd, NITEL and its mobile arm, MTEL, by NATCOM Consortium.
The Committee which were mandated by the plenary to investigate the transactions months back, submitted its findings yesterday, after several public hearings and poring through tons of memoranda.
It would be recalled that after four unsuccessful attempts between 2001 and 2011, the National Council on Privatisation in February 2012, directed the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, to privatise the companies through a guided liquidations process.
The NATCOM Consortium was one of the 17 companies which submitted Expressions of Interest (EOI) when the bid was advertised in June 2014.
Following prequalification, NATCOM and NATTAG Consortium qualified for the next stage and were invited to submit Technical and Financial bids for the companies’ assets. NATCOM accompanied its bid with the mandatory Bid Bond of $10 million, as stipulated in the Liquidators Request for Proposal. NATTAG’s failure to comply disqualified it.
At a Public ceremony December 2014, where the financial and technical bids were open, NATCOM, with a bid of $252.25 million, emerged as the winner of the bid.
While many telecommunications industry watchers praised the exercise and adjudged it a good deal for the Federal Government and the country, there were some pockets of protest in some quarters, who felt the transaction needed to be looked into.
This apparently informed the decision of the House of Representatives to investigate the transaction.
But the committees, in the report which the House adopted yesterday, were unequivocal about their findings that the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) enforced due process and transparency in the course of the transaction.
The report read to the House by Saheed Akinlade Fijabi, the chairman of House Committee on Communications read in part:
“That the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) in enforcing due process, transparency and adopting procedure, in line with international best practice, during the entire sale process, should adopt and apply such procedure in future privatisation exercise.”
The House, through the adopted report therefore called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to meet “its obligations and Commitments to the Bureau of Public Enterprises and core investor (NATCOM) in line with the Presidential approval on licenses and spectrum for the effective take off of NITEL and MTEL.”
The Report went further to urge the Federal Government to encourage NATCOM Consortium; owners of NITEL and MTEL by creating an enabling environment that will make the two entities compete with other telecom companies.
“This, according to the report,” is because NATCOM Consortium is an indigenous Company with great potentials for creating employment opportunities, reducing the huge amount of capital plight that is currently being experienced in the telecoms sector and foster strategic competition that is capable of further reducing the cost of communications in Nigeria.”
Jumoke Akiyode
