National president, Senior Staff Association of Communication, Transport and Corporations, SSACTAC, Comrade E. Kazzah speaks to Onayemi Bamidele on NITEL and related matters.
What exactly is wrong with NITEL?
What is wrong with governance in Nigeria is what is affecting NITEL. NITEL as a corporate organisation does not have a problem but government's interference right from the beginning to government's policy on privatisation and government's insincerity in the privatisation process is what has affected NITEL.
But privatisation has created competition in the Industry?
To tell you the frank truth, I look at privatisation as a failure and government should review its stands on privatisation. Privatisation appears to have come to frustrate the Nigerian workers and the government don't care. It is denying the Nigerian local industry growth and in fact it has drawn Nigeria backwards because when you look at all the Nigerian companies that have so far being privatised, none is making up to 40% profit. So we need to review it seriously because it has not achieved its set goals.
So what is the way forward for NITEL?
I think the government having gone through all these series of attempts and failures since 2003 till date, should have taken one or two steps. First, they should have reviewed NITEL's problem by way of asking public opinion. If they feel labour opinion is one sided and they believe the management opinion is not favourable as well as that of the board put in place to monitor NITEL's operations, then they should have thrown it to the public, organised a stakeholders conference, invited experts in the industry, consultants and some segment of the society to get an overview on NITEL issue.
Secondly, I want to say that the workers should be allowed to run NITEL. These are set of people who were properly trained on how to handle the operations of the company and they know all that needs to be done. However, we need the support of government by way of giving us the authority to run NITEL and give us the backing. I want to assure you that NITEL workers can bring NITEL back to life while the privatisation policy is reviewed. Because from all indications all attempts to sell NITEL has failed and we are ready to put in our best. All we need is government to give us the go ahead. If government can look at all the failures and the huge money involved in sorting out NITEL problems; sorting of entitlement, salaries and the liabilities that are coming from organisations and individuals who make claims to service that were “rendered” the figure is about N208 billion. If this should continue, the government is going to forever be laying off debt it never incurred day in, day out, because the privatisation will continue to delay. And if they will not allow the workers to revive NITEL, the simple solution is get it liquidated and let every one go and rest.
What is your view on the perception of Nigerians to NITEL?
The Nigerian people where not properly informed about the challenges NITEL had, even though some of them were aware. Many Nigerians thought that the issue of monopoly, government interference and some other political interest were the major obstacles, but frankly speaking, NITEL was the major financial muscle for the government as at that time. It was performing very well in terms of revenue generation and collection. I could remember that NITEL was used to assist the government when they were operating ECOMOG in Liberia and Sierra Leone. NITEL money was used to support these interventions. NITEL money was used to pay postal services. It was used to organise several international programmes and still the company remitted quite a chunk to the government treasury. But the interest that came in to some government official during the liberalisation of the telecoms sector shifted the interest of some powerful government officials to these GSM outfits.
A lot of Nigerians who were supposed to advise government to ensure that NITEL is maintained and brought to lime light despite the coming of the Private Telecoms Operators, PTOs, did not advise government aright because they were comfortably taken care of by those telecoms operators. They wanted to kill NITEL in order to allow the private telecom operators to survive. So they came up through a contract of management structure that brought Pentascope. When they came, we had a lot of money in billion of dollars. But Pentascope came and carted away that money. No project was executed. Nothing was done for two years. Pentascope was hanging and the money went away. Since then NITEL has never been allowed to operate effectively. They have not been allowed to put in any project or do any activity, since 2003 till date. So definitely by today the ordinary Nigerian will say 'what is NITEL' because they have not felt NITEL in any way. But if NITEL had been allowed to compete; none of these PTOs would be able to stand it. The MTEL that is the subsidiary of NITEL was every where in the country, in every local government area. And it was very clear, effective and very cheap. The landline which should have been a service which would have supported the MTEL service was erased from the field.
Again the death of NITEL is a deliberate government agreement. Some of the vandalisations that have been effected on our cable were done by these PTOs. When we catch some of them and take them to the police station the next day, they would have been released. We all know that Glo is a very strong enemy of NITEL. But the workers are not deterred. We are ready to make a difference with NITEL if the government can give us the support and the backing. We should understand that the GSM was introduced as an alternative and to serve as a means of emergency situation. If we look at our daily spending on GSM and calculate per day per month, you will realise what we are spending. If government had allowed NITEL to perform, we would not be spending too much because it is only during emergency situation that you would use your GSM. Today there is no privacy again. Everyone is busy discussing their private lives in public. But if NITEL was effective you would make your calls at home, in the office and the GSM will be for emergency.
