Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari this week ordered an investigation into the US$252.5 million sale of Nitel.
The previous government, led by Goodluck Jonathan, selected the NATCOM consortium as the preferred bidder for the former state-owned telco and its mobile unit Mtel in late 2014.
The sale closed in April amid claims that the process was opaque, and that Nitel was deliberately undervalued so that unscrupulous members of Jonathan’s administration could purchase the assets at a discount.
In a statement on Tuesday, the government said Buhari is "concerned by the continuing protests of former Nitel employees and other Nigerians over the manner in which assets of the company were sold."
According to a report by The Nation, Buhari is not opposed to the privatisation of Nitel, but rather the manner in which the process was conducted.
"He wants us to bring a memo on how the whole transaction was undertaken so that he would know whether Nigeria was short changed or not," said permanent secretary Tunji Olaopa, in the report.
Nitel’s fixed and mobile networks are not operational, and when the sale to NATCOM was completed government officials insisted that $252.5 million was a reasonable price for a moribund entity.
