BY VINCENT UJUMADU Anambra
TIME was when the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, NITEL, used to be the alpha and omega in the communications industry as it  enjoyed unfettered monopoly.

In those days, telephone subscribers were prepared to pay any amount to acquire NITEL line not minding the epileptic nature of its services. But all that have changed and the once booming NITEL offices across the country have become mere shadows of the past glory.

Since the regulation of the communication industry, NITEL no longer provide end user services to customers as it had since lost that to the mobile telephone subscribers which came in the wake of the privatization NITEL.

The wholesale business, which gave it the authority to allocate telecommunication channels to the mobile telephone operators, has also been lost as the effectiveness of the service is no longer guaranteed due to vandalisation of its facilities which started even before government muted the idea of privatizing the industry, a policy that eventually led to its total collapse.

In Anambra territorial office of NITEL which is part of the Enugu zone comprising eight states, there are only four staff  headed by the Territorial Manager, Mr. John Onwuka and they are virtually doing nothing, except cleaning the offices.

All the vehicles used in the territory when the going was good have become scraps and litter the compound. Cables that were not used before the problem set in are lying there in the open and gathering dusts.

The telephone booths which were at some point serving the people on the streets have become antiquities and packed at a corner of the office.

Mr. Ben Onugbolu, the general manager in charge of the Enugu zone of INTEL painted a pitiable picture of the situation in INTEL when Vanguard encountered him in Awka.

He said: “No NITEL exchange is working any longer and no matter how we try, we cannot make it operational to fit into the modern telecommunications technology.

As far as we are concerned, government encouraged people to kill NITEL through uprooting its cable network across the country in the name of road construction. When these things happened and officials of NITEL complained, nothing happened and gradually we lost control which made government to start thinking of privatization.”

As it is, the once engine room of the telecommunications industry, the NITEL exchange, located in all the territories across the country, are rotting away.

The privatization plan of the telecommunications giant started in 2006 with the disengagement of 13,850 NITEL staff. Today, there are only a few NITEL staff left throughout the country and these are people who decided to stay at a time others were paid off.

In the Enugu zone for instance, there are only 58 NITEL workers left and Enugu territory has only 17, while the rest are distributed to the other states under the zone. It was gathered that government later went into agreement with the left over workers to buy over their pension and other liabilities and the various unions in NITEL accepted the plan and the workers were paid five years of their salaries.

In 2010, there was also a presidential task force headed by the minister of labour and productivity, Emeka Wogu which further reduced the NITEL staff to just 340 and MTEL staff to 45.

These remaining workers of NITEL are hardly paid because they do not generate enough revenue as the little revenue generated from SAT 3 is used to pay counterpart contribution which is far less than our salaries.

Presently, NITEL is no longer allocated funds under the recurrent expenditure as the Bureau for Public Enterprise, BPE, prepares NITEL budget as capital expenditure and with the delay in the release of funds for capital projects, NITEL staff have remained without payment of salaries since February, 2012.

But Onugbolu was certain that no matter the situation, INTEL will continue to be the national carrier of the country’s telecommunications industry because that is the right thing to do. He however does not foresee the return of the land line in peoples home and offices as the introduction of GSM has relegated that to the background.

Govt is frustrating the privatization of NITEL

BY PETER DURU Benue

Government is frustrating the privatization of NITEL because they are protecting some interests”

This was the assertion of one of the 10 remaining staff of NITEL in BenueState. The staff who craved anonymity told Vanguard  in Makurdi that before the appalling situation they were 153 staff that were on the payroll of NITEL in BenueState.

His words: “In the thick of the crisis, 100 were retrenched, which was followed by the sacking of another 43 and today we have only 10 staff of NITEL in the entire state. But in the entire country we have only 400 staff of the company left, though some have succumbed to death due to hardship and suffering.

“Even though we know that NITEL is still generating close to N200million monthly from its submarine cables (SAT 3) with which it provides services to other service providers and broadcast stations, we do not receive anything as salaries”.

“We have not been paid a kobo as salaries in the last 12 months and the painful part of it all is that nobody is saying anything about it; we have been left to carry on like orphans. That is the painful story of how some persons in government have deliberately killed the NITEL that was the pride of Nigeria some years ago”.

On what should be done to get NITEL back on its feet again, the beleaguered staff said, “we still have our equipment intact. Except for our cables that vandals have been tampering with, everything is still intact. All we need do is to change our cables to optic fibre and we will be good to go because all of our equipment are in good working condition.

“In fact, here in Makurdi, we still have the best digital exchange in this part of the world which was installed here by Senator David Mark when he was the Minister of Communication. All we demand is that the company should be sold to workers because there are ready banks who are willing to finance the take over by both serving and retired workers of NITEL.

“On the other hand, government can resuscitate the company by putting its money and at the same time setting a target for workers in terms of monthly returns on investment and I can assure you that if this is done, the revival of NITEL would commence in earnest”.

Abandoned to rot in Jigawa

By Tina Akanam

In Dutse, the Jigawa State Capital, the NITEL headquarters was a sorry sight, when Vanguard visited the premises last week  The abandoned property was over grown with different kind of weeds.

Interestingly, the gate is being guarded by two security men including an armed police officer.

Further findings reveal that some staff still hang around the office everyday. One of the staff said his reason for going to work even though there was nothing to do “is because I don’t want to remain at home doing nothing. I am hopeful that one day the new owners of NITEL will employ me.” Apart from the abandoned NITEL structure most of the NITEL cables have been vandalised.

Efforts to enter the premises was blocked by the security men, who insisted that visitors were not allowed. However, one Mr Paul who said he had a brother working with NITEL in Dutse before the place was distressed lamented that the property being abandoned by the Federal Government to waste away could be put into use for other purposes. ”It is only in a country like Nigeria that such properties worth billions of Naira can be abandoned because of poor government polices.”

A former national officer of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Comrade Mati Ali, also described as unfortunate the fall of NITEL in the country. He said with multi billion naira telecommunication facilities some of the GSM providers are using to boost their service, the Federal Government should have setup a committee to come up with suggestions on how best to utilise NITEL facilities of NITEL all over the country instead allowing of them  to waste. He then called on the National assembly to revisit NITEL issues with a view reviving the company.

 Read more Multi-million naira  facilities decay in Enugu