BY Peter Egwuatu, with agency reports

LAGOS — The Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, yesterday gave the reserve bidder (Omen International Consortium) in the sale of Nigerian Telecommunication Ltd. (NITEL) two weeks to confirm if it was still interested in the acquisition of NITEL.

The BPE  wrote to the Omen International Consortium last month asking if it would be interested in revalidating its reserve bidder status after the preferred bidder (New Generation Consortium) missed several payment deadlines.

BPE Director General,  Bolanle Onagoruwa, said Omen had been given two more weeks to confirm its February 2010 offer of $959 million.

“Should Omen fail to do so, the other options for NITEL would be to set a minimum price for the firm and offer it to the remaining bidders, to liquidate it, or to restart the whole bidding process again” Onagoruwa noted.

It will be noted that British Virgin Islands_registered Omen consortium, which includes China Unicom and Fiber Home Technologies Limited, submitted a bid of USD956.9 million for a 75% stake in NITEL and it mobile arm M_Tel during the latest attempt to privatise the company, held in February 2010.

The government began seeking a buyer for a minimum 75% of NITEL and 100% of M_Tel in July 2009 after previous majority shareholder Transcorp divested its stake earlier in the year.

It was reported that the BPE has now written to Omen asking if it would be interested in revalidating its reserve bidder status. ‘If your bid is revalidated, it would give the Federal Government the right to invite your consortium or enter into negotiations to take up the offer,’ the letter said, according to a BPE statement.

New Generation’s bid of USD2.5 billion was approved in October 2010, after an investigation into the bidding process led to an eight_month delay. The New Generation consortium – which comprises Minerva Group of Dubai, Nigeria’s GiCell Wireless and technical partner China Unicom – was asked to pay a bid security of USD750 million within ten days from 25 October and was given 60 days to pay the remaining USD1.75 billion. On 5 November the bid security deadline was extended by 20 working days and subsequently to 23 December 2010, after the consortium failed to come up with the funds in time.

However, New Generation failed to meet its extended payment deadline, and in January 2011 the BPE revoked the sale to New Generation and recommended Omen be invited to acquire NITEL, following approval from the National Council of Privatisation (NCP)