By Prince Osuagwu

THE Association of Rural Telephony Operators of Nigeria (ARTON), has explained position on the first phase of the National Rural Telephony Project, dismissing as baseless, a story by one of the Nigerian newspapers linking the project with fraud.

According to the association, the publication smacks of distraction that could derail the original aim of the project and therefore should not be taken seriously.

In a statement jointly signed by Engr. Gerry Ekesiani, CEO. Voicewares Networks Limited and Patrick Okonmah Esq,Vice_President & General Counsel Hezonic Limited on behalf of the association, the group said that “the Operators have already taken over the networks as mandated in the letters of award and continue to carry out work on the networks and paying substantial amount of money to secure the same.

They have also secured a $350m loan facility/agreement in principle for the commissioning and expansion of the networks preparatory for roll out of Broadband and Applications through Fixed Mobile convergence.

They have obtained their Licence, Frequency and Numbering Plans from NCC, finalized agreement with their Technical Partners, Diamond Bank, Local Financial Arrangers/Facilitators, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Groupe as Project Managers , PricewaterhouseCoopers as Transaction Advisors, Alcatel Lucent as Technology Vendor/ Management Service and Standard Alliance as Insurers”.

Employment creation

The NRTP Phase One, is expected to create over 10,000,000 jobs directly and indirectly on roll_out as employment creation platform to Nigerian Youths.

According to the duo, “ firstly, the National Rural Telephony Project as conceived by the then Obasanjo administration was intended to be in three Phases: Phase One covered 218 LGAs comprising of two technologies – the CDMA and the Alcatel 1000S12 spent $200 million Chinese Loan.

The Second Phase, which contracts are said to have been awarded, has not commenced. But the first Phase has been completed since 2006. It is this First Phase that the five companies mentioned in the write up submitted bids and were awarded licences to operate under a PPP arrangement with the FGN. It is therefore, mischievous, perhaps tendentious for the report to allege fraud on the project as a whole”.

The association also denied that all the operators on the rural telephony project, were involved in the bid for NITEL, as allegedly reported by newspaper, but explained that it was only G_Cel, which is actually an Operator in the project, that was involved in the bid as a partner with New Generation.

Explaining the role of the association in the whole project, the duo stated that “the award to our companies in December 2009, followed all Due Process, which began in mid-2006, when the Federal Government set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee under Chairmanship of the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE) to develop the framework for participation of private operators in the NRTP and also to facilitate the process of identifying and selecting suitable operators, who have the requisite financial, technical and managerial capacity to operate the various networks.

“Membership of the Committee comprised of the DG of BPE, as Chairman and other members including the DG of National Frequency Management Council, Presidential Adviser on ICT Matters, representative of the Minister of Finance, Representative of the NCC, and Representative of the Minister of Information & Communications who served as the Secretary”.

NRTP Transaction

The association further pointed out that the design and implementation of the transaction was modelled on a Lease, Operate and Own (LOO) framework, and that the selection process followed a competitive bidding process prescribed by the World Bank for privatization and concession transactions and undertaken in the most transparent manner possible.

Ekesiani, recalled that the process commenced on October 24, 2006 with advertisements placed in three national newspapers calling for Expression of Interest (EOIs) from prospective operators of the NRTP networks. Sequel to the invitation, 54 companies responded by paying N50,000.00 each to obtain the forms for Expression of Interest.

By the deadline of 29th November 2006, 45 companies returned completed application forms. Based on the agreed criteria, the EOIs were evaluated by the Inter-ministerial Technical Sub-Committee and 13 out of the 45 companies were pre-qualified and subsequently invited to collect the Bid documents including the Request for Proposals (RFP), and to return their Technical and Financial proposals together with a bid bond of US$250,000.00 per zone.

By the deadline, nine companies returned their bids with the prescribed documents and the bid bond. Again the Inter-Ministerial Sub-Committee first evaluated the technical bids out of which seven companies were qualified.

However, due to certain circumstances it took over one year after the technical evaluation, for the financial bids to be opened. Finally on assuming duty as Minister, Professor Dora Akunyili, publicly opened the Financial Bids at a ceremony held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja, on 18th December, 2008.

Five companies emerged as the Preferred Bidders in the various zones, with Suburban Limited (now Telefund Ltd) emerging for Abuja and Kaduna zones at the cost of$47.7 million and $47.6 million respectively; Gicel Wireless emerging for Bauchi Zone at $30 million; Voicewares Networks Limited for Enugu Zone at $57 million; Key Communications for Ibadan Zone at $38 million and Hezonic for PortHarcount Zone at $38 million. With these, the total contract amounted to about $248.5 Million.

“In March 2009, the process and the names of these companies were endorsed by the President after which the Inter-Ministerial Committee entered into a detailed negotiation of the terms of the Lease Agreement, before letters of award which were vetted by Attorney General of the federation and Infrastructure commission respectively, were issued to the five companies on 22 December, 2009 by the FMIC.

Since the Award, the Operators have been pressing the FMIC to sign the Lease Agreement with us, and have had until the new Ministers were sworn_in held meetings every fortnight to iron out outstanding issues.