Nigeria’s legacy telecom firm, Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) will be liquidated.
The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) has approved ‘guided liquidation’ as the strategy for the privatisation of Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd (NITEL) and its mobile arm, M-TEL, in view of the huge liabilities of both companies according to a statement from the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the body charged with Nigeria’s privatisation exercise.
The NCP has also ordered an investigation into the management of the company. The investigation is in respect of revenues received by the corporate but which remain on accounted for.
The NCP Nitel/Mtel management had made a presentation to the NCP admitting the receipt of some revenues from SAT-3 but were not able to fully account for the revenues. Besides, they continue to draw their salaries and wages from the Federal Government of Nigeria.
The NCP also noted that NITEL’s account has not been audited for several years.
The Nigerian government has made several attempts to sell NITEL to private investors before now without any success. Nigeria’s House of Assembly recently disclosed that the firms liabilities may be as high as N250 billion (USD 1.57billion).
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