NITEL liquidator to recover N250bn from MDAs

NITEL Building, Abuja

The liquidator of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, Olutola Senbore, is to recover debts owed the company and its mobile subsidiary, the Nigerian Mobile Telecommunications Limited, by Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the government, the Bureau of Public Enterprises has said.

The Head of Public Communications, BPE, Mr. Alex Okoh, said this in a telephone interview in Abuja on Tuesday.

The MDAs reportedly owe about N250bn to NITEL and MTel, which were recently sold to a private investor, NATCOM Consortium, through a process of liquidation.

Okoh told our correspondent that the recovery of the debts was part of the mandate of the liquidator, adding that it had commenced the process with the MDAs and the other debtors.

He also disclosed that the creditors to NITEL and MTel had submitted their claims to the company.

According to him, the verification of claims by creditors is ongoing and this is expected to pave the way for the sharing of the proceeds from the sale of the entities to the creditors.

The National Council on Privatisation had at its meeting of February 27, 2012, approved the privatisation of NITEL and MTEL through “guided liquidation”.

The strategy was adopted by the council after due consideration of other options and in the light of the previous failed attempts to privatise NITEL and MTEL through strategic core investor sale and negotiated sale strategies and the huge liabilities to creditors to the tune of over N300bn.

Consequently, advertisements for submission of Expressions of Interest from prospective bidders for the acquisition of the assets and business undertakings of NITEL and MTEL were placed in both local and international print media by the liquidator.

At the closing date on June 30, 2014, 17 organisations/consortia submitted the EOIs of which only two satisfactorily met the stipulated criteria for pre-qualification.

On September 18, 2014, the two successful applicants, NATCOM Consortium and NETTAG Consortium that met the minimum pass mark of 75 per cent were pre-qualified and issued the Request for Proposals. They were allowed to proceed to data room and physical due diligence stage prior to preparation and submission of their technical and financial proposals.

Following the disqualification of NETTAG Consortium, only the financial bid of NATCOM Consortium qualified for opening on December 3, 2014.

Accordingly, the financial proposal of NATCOM consortium was publicly opened on December 3, 2014 which it won with a bid price of $252.25m.

Consequently, the consortium on December 22, 2014 in Abuja signed the assets sale agreement and obtained the offer letter from the liquidator of NITEL/MTEL and the BPE and was eventually handed over the companies on April 28.