NITEL on the Brink of Collapse?

The Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe, has warned that Nigeria Telecommunication company(Nitel) may lose its operational licence next month.

Ndukwe said the fate of the telecom company would be determined by decisions to be taken at next month’s board meeting of the Nigeria’s telecom regulatory agency.

According to the NCC boss, Nitel has failed to live up the expectations of the regulatory body and the Nigerian people; clearly indicating insufficient capacity to live up to its licence obligations, giving way to the likelihood of a seizure of its licence and transfer of same to another operator with capacity to operate the network.

Nitel staff recently went on strike to protest the non-payment of salaries, running into months. Last year, the NCC gave warning that it would revoke Nitel’s licence as it has failed to meet its obligations.

The striking workers shut down SAT-3, the undersea marine cable that connects Nigeria to other Africa African countries and the rest of the world.

Striking workers also closed down the private telecom operators (PTOs) Room in Lagos that provides local interconnectivity to telecom operators forcing many networks to seek alternative and costly pipes to re-route their calls.

But many operators were simply confined to making calls only within their own networks as they could not make a re-route outside the PTOs Room.

Nitel is already back to the auction room after several attempt to sell it in the past has failed. It was last sold to Transcorp which currently has a controlling stake in excess of 50 per cent in the telcom company.

But since its handover to Transcorp, a conglomerate owned by persons believed to be business cronies of Nigeria’s immediate ex President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nitel has fallen into worst season, failing to make fresh rollouts and sustain its existing network properly.

Its network has gone from about 450,000 land lines to less than 50,000, though the company is officially putting the figure at about 100,000.