The Federal Government on Thursday announced the appointment of Olusola Senbore and Co. as liquidator for the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its sister company, mobile Telecommunications (MTEL).
The Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Ngama, made the announcement in Abuja while briefing State House correspondents on the outcome of the 5th Meeting of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), presided over by Vice President Namadi Sambo.
Ngama said that the liquidator was successfully selected from eight companies that tendered a bid to be considered for the liquidation of NITEL/MTEL within the next six months.
‘’We are also happy to announce that at last liquidator has been appointed for NITEL/MTEL and this liquidator was reached after several bids were collected. About eight companies that bidded to be considered, at the end of the day, five qualified and then after a lot of analysis, we came to the successful liquidator who is Olusola Senbore and Co.’’
According to him, government expects the two firms to be sold off as ongoing concerns to continue in the same line of business.
He assured that “there will be no dismembering of the assets of the firms and then selling them differently, but the process will be similar to the sale of national fertilizer company in Onne, Rivers State, to global fertilizer giant, Notore.”
Ngama, therefore, expressed the hope that “this time around, we expect the sale of NITEL to be a success”.
According to him, liquidator and interested investors are expected to carry out due diligence on NITEL and MTEL after which preferred prices will be set by the BPE ahead of the privatisation process.
He said the Council also approved the partial privatisation of the Bank of Industry (BoI) and the Bank of Agriculture.
According to Ngama, the move is predicated on the need to reposition them with a private sector outlook and muscle to attract additional domestic and international funds.
“We have operated them for long and we think we should get the private sector in to bring in additional financing. We need partners to reposition the banks and help them raise funds.”
Ngama announced the approval of seven pre-qualified firms for the financial bidding of the privatisation of Kaduna Power Distribution Company, while three firms also qualified from the technical tests to bid for the Afam Power Plant.
For Kaduna Disco, the pre-qualified bidders are Axis Power Distribution Ltd; NAHCO Consortium; INCAR Consortium; Aiteo Consortium; LEDA Consortium Ltd; Nothwest Power Ltd; and Copperbelt Consortium.
Primezia Energy Ltd; TES Power Ltd; and Talevares Group emerged bidders for the Afam plant.
According to him, the pre-qualified bidders are required to provide post-qualification security of $15 million for the Kaduna Distribution Company and $10 million for the Afam Power Plant.
The minister said that the NCP gave the go-ahead for BPE to set aside N59.55 billion from the sale of Egbin power plant for operations of the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc.
He said N50 billion of the amount would serve as payment guarantee for the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) to be signed with privatised power generation companies, while the remaining balance of N9.55 billion would be kept by BPE to “assist it proceed further with the privatisation process, including consultancy works”.
He said that the council resolved that the expertise of BPE would be deployed in the process of privatising some national assets like the river basin authorities, national parks and the national stadia.
