Buyers shortlisted for NITEL/MTEL… yet again

The first national carrier, NITEL, and its mobile arm, Mtel, will be sold off to either NATCOM or NECTAR Consortium as liquidation process enters the final stage.

All efforts to privatise these national assets since 2001 have failed amid political wrangling and investor failings.

On Wednesday, the government said the “guided liquidation” process ─ which it settled for after another failed privatisation effort ─ has produced the final two companies, out of a shortlist of 17,  to bid for the assets of the telecoms firms.

NATCOM scored 90.7% and NECTAR 90.2% to qualify for the takeover bid.

The third National Council on Privatisation (NCP) meeting presided over by Vice-President Namadi Sambo on Monday deliberated on the evaluation and approval of report for the expressions of interest in the guided liquidation.

Briefing the media at the end of the meeting, minister of mines and steel development, Alhaji Musa Sada, said:”Of this evaluation of the 17, two are qualified for request for proposal issuance. And this what the council deliberated on today and approved the qualifications of the two companies. The two companies are NATCOM Consortium and NECTAR and they came top with 90.7 and 90.2 percents respectively.

“The target is to make sure that NITEL-MTEL comes back. It is a very robust assets, basically, you can hardly get any of the current ones that has as much assets as it has. And it is a very good thing to the country if we can have these assets.

“Everyone of us  in this country is aware that you can hardly talk of telephone landlines now and these are some of the things you cannot do without, mobile telephones or networks are not substitute.”

In 2011, the privatisation process failed for the umpteenth time when Omen International, the reserve bidder, did not revalidate its bid for the national carrier.

Omen was said to have concluded that it would be unable to raise the money it offered for NITEL, just as the New Generation Consortium, the preferred winner of the February 2010 bid, was unable to.

New Generation Consortium was made up of China Unicom of Hong Kong, Minerva Group of Dubai and Nigeria’s GiCell Wireless Ltd

In 2001, Investors International London Limited (ILL) made the first attempt to acquire NITEL but defaulted in paying the bid price of $1.317 billion, thus forfeiting the bid.

Pentascope of Netherlands was appointed to revamp Nitel, but that attempt also failed and left NITEL debt-ridden.

Orascom also attempted to acquire NITEL with $256.5 million but lost the bid to Transcorp which acquired NITEL for $500 million.  The sale to Transcorp in 2006 was the most successful with Transcorp acquiring a 75 per cent stake which was later reduced to 51% owing to issues of finance.

Transcorp at the time got a $500 million facility from a consortium of banks led by UBA Plc to acquire the shares. The Transcorp attempt also failed to revive NITEL and it eventually exited.