SHUT UP! NITEL Ex-MDs, Retirees Tell el-Rufai

Former chief executives, union and group of retirees from the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), on Wednesday, rose against an attempt by former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mallam Nasir el-Rufa’i, to shift the blame for the collapse of the telecommunications company from himself, urging the Nigerian government to hold him solely responsible for this monumental national loss.

One of the former Managing Directors of MTEL, the GSM arm of NITEL, Mr  Kunle Bello, who voluntarily resigned to avoid the touted new managers, Pentascope, said he foresaw the collapse of NITEL/MTEL due to insincere and inconsistent implementation of policies by the el-Rufa’i led Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).

He described the Pentascope management brought in by el-Rufa’i as an “irredeemable misfortune” upon the telecommunications industry and an unmitigated disaster on NITEL/MTEL staff.

Bello aaid Pentascope squandered more than N100 billion of NITEL’s hard-earned money, besides the loss of revenue, without adding a single telephone line.

He challenged the nation’s judicial and executive arms of government to rise to the occasion to acquaint themselves of blame by going after the perpetrators of the fraud.

In a statement by the group of retirees, signed and issued in Abuja, on Wednesday, they disagreed with the claim in a widely-circulated statement by el-Rufa’i that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar approved the appointment of Pentascope, the failed management consultant hired to manage NITEL in 2003.

They held el-Rufa’i responsible, not only for the collapse of NITEL, but also the destruction of their careers.

They also accused el-Rufa’i of misleading, not only the National Council on Privatisation, but the government, by presenting Pentascope as a capable management company that could turn around NITEL.

One of the former staffers, who spoke with reporters on this issue, Michael Awos, said Pentascope was brought purposely to “siphon money and kill this organisation (NITEL) they had spent all their lives to build.”

Rather than using Atiku as scapegoat for the collapse of NITEL, the concerned group of former NITEL workers advised el-Rufa’i to be honourable enough to accept the responsibility for railroading and blackmailing the former NITEL board and the privatisation council into approving a contract that had short-changed Nigerians and children yet unborn.

Elias Kazzah, national adviser of Senior Staff Association of Communications, Transport and Corporations (SSACTC) and president of the NITEL unit of the association, called on el-Rufa’i to shut up, on account of his mismanagement of the Pentascope transaction that led to the demise of the company.

He said NITEL was commercially viable that it contributed to NIPOST and provided support to the ECOMOG troops in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

A former Managing Director of NITEL, Professor Buba Bajoga, decried the destruction of NITEL, describing it as “very painful.”

He said by the time he left the organisation as its head in 2000, NITEL was a very viable commercial organisation, adding that “NITEL made more profit than most banks. We paid all our bills and were financing all our projects.”