Two of the seventeen companies bidding for Nigeria Telecommunications Ltd (NITEL) and its mobile arm, Mtel, have been shortlisted by the Federal Government.

The two companies which were approved for the issuance of request proposal are Natcom Consortium and Nectar Consortium. Both came top with 90.7 percent and 90.2 percent, respectively.

This was disclosed by Musa Sada, the minister of mines and steel development, while briefing journalists after the meeting of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) on Monday chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo.

Assets up for bid in NITEL are the licences and the spectrum, the nationwide fixed wired networks, the national right of way duct system, the fibre optic transmission backbone, and the CDMA network system. Others are international gateway earth stations, microwave transmission equipment/network and towers and other core assets.

The assets up for sale in Mtel are the licences and the spectrum, national right of way, the Mtel GSM network including mobile switching centres, base station controllers, base transceiver stations and the general packet radio services. Others are the analog (TACs) system and other core assets.

Briefing journalists on the outcome of the council meeting, Sada, alongside the minister of works, Mike Onolememen and director general of Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), Benjamin Dikki, said the government is making painstaking efforts in the guided liquidation process to ensure that Mtel/NITEL come back with robust network of infrastructure.

“The criteria are being followed and out of this 17, two are qualified for request for proposal issuance. And this is what the council deliberated on today and approved the qualifications of the two companies. The two companies are Natcom Consortium and Nectar Consortium and they came top with 90.7 percent and 90.2 percent, respectively, said the minister.

He further added that efforts at getting NITEL back on stream has been very strenuous, because of so many issues, so many problems, but this time around there have been strong efforts so that we do not go back to what we had before. With what is put in place we are very confident that we would only move forward to take us to the appropriate destination.