Nigerian National Assembly senators have expressed their opposition to government plans to complete the liquidation of former national telecoms firm the Nigerian Telecommunications Company Plc (NITEL).
According to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Privatization and Commercialization, Olugbenga Obadara, the senators are not in support of the proposed action of the Nigerian Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), saying the agency does not know the actual value of the company.
“They cannot tell us the worth of NITEL, they want to liquidate, thus as people representing Nigerians who brought us here, we cannot allow such to happen making us to stand,” Obadara said.
Instead of liquidating NITEL, he advised the Nigerian government to rescue the company and offer it concessions via a Public Private Partnership (PPP). This he said would be more appropriate than outright liquidation.
“The fact is that NITEL is owing stakeholders NGN351 billion, out of which NGN179 billion is owed to the Federal Government alone, but the available fact before us is that government agencies are owing NITEL over NGN250billion,” he said.
He also blamed Pentascope for the genesis of NITEL’s woes.
“Don’t let us lose the fact that the problem of NITEL started from the Pentascope regime, a firm which started operations in a shop and squandered the NGN100 billion it met in the NITEL account when it took over,” he said.
