Nigeria sets final deadline for Nitel reserve bidder

Nigeria's privatisation agency said on Tuesday the reserve bidder for former state telecoms monopoly Nitel had one more day to come up with a $105 million bid security or the firm could face liquidation.

Bolanle Onagoruwa, director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), said the Omen International Consortium had told the agency it had made the payment, but that the funds had yet to turn up in the BPE account.

Onagoruwa repeated that should Omen fail to pay, the BPE would consider other options including setting a minimum price for Nitel and offering it to the remaining bidders, or liquidating the struggling company.

Nigeria is one of the world's fastest-growing telecoms markets but the government has been trying to sell Nitel for almost a decade, struggling mainly because of the shambolic state of its fixed-line infrastructure and high levels of debt.

Its fixed lines have fallen to fewer than 100,000 from five times that number in 2001 and subscribers to its MTEL mobile unit have dropped to a few thousands from over 1 million.

The BPE wrote to the Omen consortium in March asking if it would be interested in revalidating its original February 2010 offer of $959 million after the preferred bidder missed several payment deadlines.

The agency said in April Omen had two weeks to respond but Onagoruwa said it had subsequently written a letter promising to pay the bid security.  Reuters