The Nigerian government has decided to cancel the sale of its state-owned telecommunications company, Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL).
This comes after Omen International Consortium failed to pay a $105 million down payment.
A spokesperson for the Bureau for Public Enterprises Chukwuma Nwokoh says they had asked Omen to make the payment by June 10 2011 and later extended the deadline to 15 June 2011 but the consortium failed to make payment.
According to Forbes, the Bureau for Public Enterprises offered NITEL to Omen after the top bidder, New Generation Consortium who submitted a bid of $2.5 billion also missed a down payment deadline.
Telecom analysts in Lagos believe that the failed attempts to sell NITEL should be examined further-
“We really need to assess what happened and why these companies failed to make payment,” says Harun Yumbal, a Lagos-based IT professional.
“Maybe there are some issues at hand that we are just not seeing right now.”
By: David Eto – ICT Senior Journalist
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