ABUJA — The Federal Government has realised over  N101 billion from the Nigeria Telecommunication Limited, NITEL, which has been in coma for a long time.

This was disclosed, Tuesday, by  Bolanle Onagoruwa, Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE,  at the opening of a two-day investigative hearing on the activities of Mtel/NITEL’s  management board, status of its investment as well as revenue generation from ongoing services rendered to other telecommunication companies in Nigeria held by the House  Joint Committee on  privatisation, finance, communications, public procurement and information technology.

The BPE boss noted that National Council on Privatisation, NCP, is favourably disposed to adopting “guided liquidation” against the injection of $1 billion for the re-activation of the two telecoms companies as alternatives.

In her presentation, Onagoruwa argued that the debt profile of the public parastatal stood at N354 billion. But  IIlyasu-Sa’ab put the total debt profile at N182 billion of which NITEL owed N79 billion while Mtel owed N103 billion.

She disclosed that $3,668,561.70 was generated from Sat-3 submarine cable, $2,855,091.81 remitted in the domiciliary account, $521,990 generated from British Telecoms, $290,230 from cable and wireless services while $1,249.84 was realised from interest.

According to her, the companies liabilities include N65,227,595,681 on equipment vendors; N81,711,196,994 on bank claims; N183,403,439,256 for government agencies and N24,504,836,126 for others.

She added that Federal Government raised N68,248,884,000 through Debt Management Office, DMO, to offset outstanding salaries totalling N54.2 billion, leaving a debt profile at N122,448,884,000 with Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON.

While reacting, Khadijat Ibrahim, chairperson of the committee  and her colleagues in the joint committee queried BPE over the N172 billion differential in the debt profile compiled by both parties.

Ibrahim who expressed concern over the BPE’s unsuccessful  privatisation exercise regarding several publicly-owned parastatals and their eventual collapse or  poor state  said: “I see no reason why the  Federal Government cannot put money into NITEL and Mtel and resuscitate them.”

In their presentations, the Senior Staff Association of Transport and Communication (SSASTAC) vowed to resuscitate the companies if handed over to workers.

On his part, Ibrahim Nakande, former minister of state for communication who flayed the handing over of NITEL/Mtel to Transcorp noted that the best option was to hand it over to Orascom.

Also speaking, Abubakar Nahuche, former Managing Director of NITEL under Transcorp maintained that Transcorp lacked the financial capacity to run the two telecoms companies and technical capacity.