LAGOS – The Bureau Public Enterprises (BPE) on Friday commenced the guided liquidation of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), with the evacuation of moveable assets of the once telecommunication giant in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) correspondent who visted some of the offices in Lagos reports that most of abandoned but viable properties of the company across the various exchanges in the city have been moved to secured sites.
The offices visited were Iponri, Oyingbo and Falomo exchanges.
At the Iponri exchange, along Funso Williams Avenue, Iganmu, an official, who pleaded anonymity, said the removal of the moveable assets was on the orders of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).
He said some of the items so far removed included abandoned vehicles and cables among others.
“We are moving the equipment from here to the other building of NITEL, as you can see, this place is burnt,’’ the source said.
The source also said that the removal of the equipment was part of preparations for the guided liquation of the telecommunications company.
According to the source the relocated properties are not part of the assets earmarked for sale.
Another source at former NITEL’s Lagos Zonal Office, Falamo, Ikoyi, said that the company’s offices at Iponri and Ikeja had been sold, hence, the evacuation of the moveable properties.
NAN recalls that the National Council on Privatisation had in August approved two firms for the guided liquidation of the NITEL and its mobile arm, M-Tel.
The firms, NATCOM Consortium and NETAD Consortium, were picked from the 17 firms shortlisted for NITEL liquidation.
The assets bided for in NITEL include the licences, the spectrum, nationwide fixed wired networks, national right of way duct system, fibre optic transmission backbone and the Code division multiple access (CDMA) network system.
The others are international gateway earth stations, microwave transmission equipment/network and towers and other core assets.
The assets up for sale in M-Tel are the licences and the spectrum, national right of way; GSM network, including mobile switching centres, base station controllers, base transceiver stations and the general packet radio services. [eap_ad_1] Mr Joe Aniechebe, spokesman for BPE had said the liquidation option was adopted because the expected proceeds from the sale was likely going to be less than its (debts’) value.
Aniechebe said NITEL owed creditors – mostly suppliers – around N400 billion and the liquidation process was aimed at protecting the government from future claims and liabilities.
Director General of BPE, Benjamin Dikki had also explained that the planned liquidation of NITEL had been quite challenging since it was difficult to determine its real assets in the face of already identified huge liabilities.
He said that government opted for guided liquidation so that at the end of the day when it was sold, government would no longer be expected to offset its liabilities.
BPE had revealed that over three billion dollars (about N480 billion) liabilities of the moribund NITEL informed its decision to opt for guided liquidation of the enterprise rather than pursuing a new privatisation drive.
On the exact value of NITEL, the DG said the value would only be established by a consortium of experts that the BPE would engage, as they would physically look at the assets, evaluate them and then ascertain what it was worth.
“We know the greatest assets NITEL has are its frequency and Right of Way (RoW), but we have not yet valued them. The value will come in to match the liabilities when the processes are concluded,’’ he said.
Guided liquidation is a process employed by BPE to ensure that an enterprise due for liquidation is liquidated either as a single going concern or as various going concerns in line with the business units of the enterprise. (NAN)
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